Danila Kumarś IB program and my Students

Danila Kumar Primary School (DK) has an excellent International Baccalaureate (IB) program. This is my first experience in an interantional school of any kind or any school other than an American public school. The IB program at DK works as a department independent from the rest of the school (which operates as a mainstream Slovene school). The program is split into two parts: primary years program (PYP) and middle years program (MYP). The PYP covers grades 1-5 and the MYP covers grades 6-8. So it is like having a small elementary and middle school operating separate (but amongst, in a way) from a regular school. There is a headmistress for the entire school, and a principal for the international department of the school.

I work with the PYP coordinator (Ms. Tina) who is essentially the IB program’s administrative chair. Ms. Tina is also the PYP’s 5th grade teacher. Ms. Tina currently has two mentees, me and Anna (who is a PYP coordinator from Bratislava, Slovakia). Anna will be here for a total of three months, shadowing Ms. Tina and learning how to better run the PYP at her school in Bratislava. I, on the other hand, am shadowing Ms. Tina while she is in the classroom. I do not know how Ms. Tina handles all of the stresses of being a coordinator, teacher, and mentor to two people! She stays very busy!

So—Ms. Tina’s students are pretty much amazing! There are 15 students whom hale from 10 different countries. All classes in the school are conducted exclusively in English, except for the language classes. Students in my class take Slovene and chose between either French or German as their third studied language (English is also studied intensively) Here are my classroom demographics:

Gender:
11 females, 4 males

Nationalities:
Bosnian: 1; Croatian: 1; Czech: 2; Italian/Greek: 1; American: 3; Serbian: 2; French: 1; English: 1; Slovene: 1; German: 2

All of the students come from families that are pretty ˝well off,˝ you could say. Parents are typically very involved in the student’s education. All of these students, given there international life-styles, speak at least two languages, English, their native languages and/or Slovene. Often, I feel that there is a lack of things that I can help with given that the academic energy has been established so solidly by Ms. Tina, and because the students are hugely interested in their learning and are typically not in need of very much attention. Where I help the most is in the English class (because I am one of few, if not the only, adult native speakers in the building) and also in math (which I have a special affinity for teaching). Otherwise, students are incredibly ‘‘on the ball,’’ so-to-speak.

This 5th grade IB classroom is quite different from my 5th grade American class. I feel that if I was in a mainstream Slovenian classroom, there would be many more similarities. Here is how they compare:

Slovene IB program:
1) Parent involvement is very high for all students
2) All students come from high socio-economic status
3) All students are multilingual
4) 15 students in the classroom
5) Teacher knows and executes constructivist learning theory
6) Students are multi-national but not multi-racial
7) School operates in an urban setting
8) 5th grade has a large exhibition (or project) that is completed and presented in the last months of the school year
9) Students will stay in the same school and building for their middle years

Both:
1) Parent involvement
2) Comparatively large class size for school/program
3) Predominantly Caucasian population
4) Feed into transient populations (American school: close military base; Slovene: parents with international occupations that require moving)
5) High parent governmental career rate

American Public 5th:
1) Parent involvement is patchy (some intense involvement, some with no involvement)
2) Wide range of student socio-economic status
3) No students are multilingual
4) 27 students in the classroom
5) Teacher knows but lacks the resources and time to execute constructivist learning theory
6) Students are multi-ethnic, but not multi-national
7) School operates in a rural setting
8) Students spend their last year in a primary education setting before moving on to a new school for the middle years