I have had classes for 6 days now and I am starting to get a feel for them - so here are my insights after such a short time.
First the teaching requirements. I teach 4 classes - math 9, math 10, Math Standard Level and Math Higher Level. so four classes but two only meet 4 days a week so my teaching load is 18 hours per week. I have to be at school from 8:00 - 4:30 every day and there is no dress code really. So faculty can where t-shirts, jeans or shorts. I find that most of the time I dress up a little - except for Fridays. In addition, all faculty have to do something outside of class. So I have been volunteered to help coach middle school boys basketball. Luckily I am the assistant coach :)
IB Curriculum. IB uses an integrated approach to mathematics. So one day you might be doing geometry, the next day calculus and the next day statistics. I have mixed feelings about this so far. On the positive side, it keeps students and teachers on their toes as you are always moving from one topic to another. It makes it easy to make connections and review previous topics. It makes it fun to teach. On the negative side is that it seems to lack depth (at least from what I can tell right now). For example, in the US curriculum we would spend two weeks or more looking at limits and different ways to use them. In the IB curriculum we barely acknowledge them as we jump into derivatives. Do you really need to know the limit rules in order to take derivatives? Maybe the US curriculum tries to do too much. I'm still trying to figure that part out.
The classes: Math 9 consists of 20 students of all levels, interests and abilities. Luckily math is highly valued in Asian cultures so most of the kids with at least one Asian parent are pushed to excel. Still I am finding it interesting to try to teach numerous subjects to numerous levels. For example two days ago I taught creating equations from word problems, yesterday and today it was rates and tomorrow it is measures of center for data sets. All in all it keeps me scheming how to approach these in an interesting style.
Math 10 is very similar to math 9 in terms of a diversity of topics and abilities of the students. 23 are in this class. We have been mainly reviewing so far but have just started graphing inequalities. In the next day or two we will look at making sense of data, particularly large data sets. All very interesting.
For IB purposes, 9th and 10th grade are still part of the Middle Years Program and as such put together a portfolio of key pieces of work. They must also do a research topic on anything they choose and every faculty is involved as an advisor to some students. Right now I only have one that compares Japanese baseball to American baseball. I should learn a few things. For 11th grade students, they have their first and only choice as far as math is concerned. They can either take mathematical studies, math standard level or math higher level. Math studies and math SL are each taught as a one year class here though I understand it is a two year class most other places.
Math SL I may be taking this slightly out of context, but last spring when students were selecting their courses they were under the impression that my predecessor would be teaching SL and HL. He did not have a very good reputation as far as his teaching ability was concerned so more than a few of the students opted out for math studies, which is taught by another teacher. Thus my SL class has only 5 students. These tend to be the bright kids who like math and with such a small group I can really push them. Right now we are doing calculus derivatives. Next week we hit integrals then it's on to sequences and series.
Math HL is a two year sequence, doing all of the SL topics and more depth and breadth. This class consists of 1 student!It is like a one on one tutorial 4 days a week. We have hit trigonometry, polynomials and quadratics already.
Both the SL and HL class lead to the IB diploma. There are 6 areas of study and at least 3 have to be Higher Level. This year's seniors (except for one) have all chosen to take HL in other areas. The way they pass the course is based on 2 portfolio pieces - this counts for 20% of their overall grade. 80% of the grade is decided by a high stakes test in May. The test lasts two days for each subject and covers the whole year.
Me. This is my first time teaching in an IB program. Thus I am still getting used to the program, the curriculum and the acronyms. Upon hearing about the curriculum I was under the understanding that these were just amazing students who had to cover a huge amount of material. After being in it for a week, I have revised my view. For the most part these are good/average students. There are some hot shots and some who need extra help. There is a lot of material but it is in bite-sized pieces, easy to cover in a couple of days. I'm sure my views and opinions will change over the next few days, weeks and months but right now this is my best take on it all.
Cheers
First the teaching requirements. I teach 4 classes - math 9, math 10, Math Standard Level and Math Higher Level. so four classes but two only meet 4 days a week so my teaching load is 18 hours per week. I have to be at school from 8:00 - 4:30 every day and there is no dress code really. So faculty can where t-shirts, jeans or shorts. I find that most of the time I dress up a little - except for Fridays. In addition, all faculty have to do something outside of class. So I have been volunteered to help coach middle school boys basketball. Luckily I am the assistant coach :)
IB Curriculum. IB uses an integrated approach to mathematics. So one day you might be doing geometry, the next day calculus and the next day statistics. I have mixed feelings about this so far. On the positive side, it keeps students and teachers on their toes as you are always moving from one topic to another. It makes it easy to make connections and review previous topics. It makes it fun to teach. On the negative side is that it seems to lack depth (at least from what I can tell right now). For example, in the US curriculum we would spend two weeks or more looking at limits and different ways to use them. In the IB curriculum we barely acknowledge them as we jump into derivatives. Do you really need to know the limit rules in order to take derivatives? Maybe the US curriculum tries to do too much. I'm still trying to figure that part out.
The classes: Math 9 consists of 20 students of all levels, interests and abilities. Luckily math is highly valued in Asian cultures so most of the kids with at least one Asian parent are pushed to excel. Still I am finding it interesting to try to teach numerous subjects to numerous levels. For example two days ago I taught creating equations from word problems, yesterday and today it was rates and tomorrow it is measures of center for data sets. All in all it keeps me scheming how to approach these in an interesting style.
Math 10 is very similar to math 9 in terms of a diversity of topics and abilities of the students. 23 are in this class. We have been mainly reviewing so far but have just started graphing inequalities. In the next day or two we will look at making sense of data, particularly large data sets. All very interesting.
For IB purposes, 9th and 10th grade are still part of the Middle Years Program and as such put together a portfolio of key pieces of work. They must also do a research topic on anything they choose and every faculty is involved as an advisor to some students. Right now I only have one that compares Japanese baseball to American baseball. I should learn a few things. For 11th grade students, they have their first and only choice as far as math is concerned. They can either take mathematical studies, math standard level or math higher level. Math studies and math SL are each taught as a one year class here though I understand it is a two year class most other places.
Math SL I may be taking this slightly out of context, but last spring when students were selecting their courses they were under the impression that my predecessor would be teaching SL and HL. He did not have a very good reputation as far as his teaching ability was concerned so more than a few of the students opted out for math studies, which is taught by another teacher. Thus my SL class has only 5 students. These tend to be the bright kids who like math and with such a small group I can really push them. Right now we are doing calculus derivatives. Next week we hit integrals then it's on to sequences and series.
Math HL is a two year sequence, doing all of the SL topics and more depth and breadth. This class consists of 1 student!It is like a one on one tutorial 4 days a week. We have hit trigonometry, polynomials and quadratics already.
Both the SL and HL class lead to the IB diploma. There are 6 areas of study and at least 3 have to be Higher Level. This year's seniors (except for one) have all chosen to take HL in other areas. The way they pass the course is based on 2 portfolio pieces - this counts for 20% of their overall grade. 80% of the grade is decided by a high stakes test in May. The test lasts two days for each subject and covers the whole year.
Me. This is my first time teaching in an IB program. Thus I am still getting used to the program, the curriculum and the acronyms. Upon hearing about the curriculum I was under the understanding that these were just amazing students who had to cover a huge amount of material. After being in it for a week, I have revised my view. For the most part these are good/average students. There are some hot shots and some who need extra help. There is a lot of material but it is in bite-sized pieces, easy to cover in a couple of days. I'm sure my views and opinions will change over the next few days, weeks and months but right now this is my best take on it all.
Cheers
Hi Jeff, very interesting observations. I got dizzy just reading about all the subject changes! This blog could turn into a good book about your experience some day.
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