Every 5 years, at each of the thousands of IB schools in over 160 different countries, the International Baccalaureate Organization, or IBO, conducts a site visit. This Wednesday, the IBO will come to our school to evaluate it on how well it follows the IB curriculum, staying through Friday. According to LHS IB Coordinator Hillary Anthamatten, “They look for things that we’re doing well… and then they also look for things where we maybe need to grow or develop as a program, or maybe fix something that’s not quite working right. So it’s supposed to be a collaborative process, a chance for us to reflect on all the great things we’re doing, but also some areas where we might need to change some things.”
In particular, the site visit committee is looking for four specific values at LHS, at least according to Anthamatten. “It’s structured around four areas,” she said. “Our purpose, which is sort of the school’s vision and the way that IB fits into LHS’s vision and also the vision of LPS as a whole district… There’s culture, that’s to do with the different policies we have in place, like inclusion. There’s an assessment policy about how we assess students, and a language policy about how we value home languages and second languages… The culture piece is all about those different pieces and policies. Then there’s environment, which is both the physical environment and then also the social-emotional environment… And then the last piece is learning. That’s how we structure classes and learning experiences for our students… The short answer [is that] they are looking for how we carry out those different pieces of our program.”
When asked about specific things that LHS would like to show off to the IBO committee, Anthamatten pointed out how LHS offers a full diploma program, as well as its flexibility with students. She also noted the 90% overall pass rate for diploma classes, compared to the international average of 80%, saying that “I think we have a really strong teaching faculty in the diploma classes, teachers that really enjoy teaching IB, and think that its general mission and values and purpose are important.”
But much of the work for the site visit was done many months earlier: the IB department worked hard to pull together documentation for the IBO, such as budgets and the official authorization from the school district, by September 15th of last year. After making revisions called for by the IBO, they then had to complete a 50-page document called the self-reflection, answering many, many questions about how our IB program runs. But since that was finished by December 1st, the department has now been concerning themselves with smaller but still essential tasks. “Today I spent a lot of time on the phone with restaurants, making sure that these people are going to have lunch, because we have to provide them with lunch,” Anthamatten remarked.
