On February 13 and 14, you may notice some new faces on our Littleton campus. These visitors will be part of the International Baccalaureate site visit team – trained evaluators whose task will be assessing how our Mackintosh staff implement the International Baccalaureate curriculum.
What is the International Baccalaureate? The IB is a “worldwide community of schools, educators and students with a shared vision and mission to empower young people with the skills, values and knowledge to create a better and more peaceful world.”
At Mackintosh, we have chosen to be part of the IB because its philosophy lines up so well with our school’s mission to educate and nurture gifted children to contribute to a world that needs their skills and talents.
Every five years, our school must be re-evaluated by the International Baccalaureate Organization in order to retain our official IB authorization. In preparing for this visit our Curriculum Coordinator Sharon Muench and our entire admin and teaching team create an extensive self-study, a 100 page report for each program (Primary Years Programme and Middle Years Programme) which includes:
- feedback from all stakeholders (a survey of faculty, staff, parents, board members, and fifth through eighth graders, conducted last school year) asking for their understanding of and opinions about the IB implementation at Mackintosh
- curriculum documents known as IB “planners” for each class which allow the evaluators to assess how our planning and teaching align with IB practices
- a selection of graded student work samples, to help the evaluators see how our assessments line up with worldwide IB grading standards
Taken together, all of these documents allow the IB evaluation team to gauge how well Mackintosh Academy aligns with the practices and standards of the IB organization.
The evaluation team consists of experienced IB educators from New York, Nevada, British Columbia, and Michigan. While the team is here, they will be observing in classrooms and interviewing teachers, students, administrators, board members and parents.
Having successfully hosted four prior IB site visits at Littleton, we are excited to welcome this evaluation team and showcase the dedication, creativity, and competence our teachers put towards implementing the IB framework at Mack. If you happen to be on campus Feb. 13 and 14, please join us in warmly welcoming our visitors!