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12/12/2016 11:00 PMAfter nearly five years of work to bring the program to town, Guilford High School (GHS) is now officially an authorized International Baccalaureate (IB) World School Diploma Programme. The IB program, which will be available to students starting next fall, gives students the opportunity to take more challenging courses and pursue a global education experience.
The IB program is a two-year curriculum for juniors and seniors focusing on inter-disciplinary studies, critical thinking, international mindedness, and personal growth. GHS Principal Rick Misenti said the program opens the door to an international education for students.
“Our high school has entered onto the global stage of teaching and learning and as a result provides our students with unlimited opportunities to make significant and positive contributions in communities both nationally and internationally,” he said. “I am so very happy for our high school and our Guilford community.”
Students can elect to take individual IB courses, much the same way students can elect to take individual Advanced Placement (AP) courses, or students can choose to follow a set IB course program and earn an IB diploma in addition to a GHS diploma. Superintendent Dr. Paul Freeman said juniors and seniors who follow the set IB diploma program have the benefit of experiencing how all of the courses fit together.
“It [the program] has both the focus on international - expanding our horizons beyond Guilford and the United States - but also it has this underlying philosophy that knowledge fits together,” he said. “You don’t just have an individual history course or an individual math course, but it focuses on how you bring information and data and knowledge together and how to communicate that out thoughtfully and that is something we value in Guilford.”
Freeman said the IB program is highly regarded around the world and by college admission offices. Guilford is only the third or fourth school in the state to have an IB program.
“It places us in a community of schools worldwide that participate at this heightened, more rigorous, curricular level,” he said. “…We see it as expanding the opportunity of options that we offer. We see it as a way of encouraging more students to really challenge themselves as they come through our 13 year experience with that final opportunity in their high school years.”
When the program begins next school year, GHS will offer at least 10 IB courses but Misenti said the plan is to keep growing the program. Several GHS teachers have already been trained and are prepared to begin teaching IB courses according to Freeman.
“Over the last five years we have leaned on our staff and in many ways this was a grassroots effort,” he said. “It was the teaching staff at the high school who were among the first to express interest in IB. We have a number of teachers who are already IB trained and ready to begin offering those courses and we will continue to provide that training and expand that cohort.”
As for the additional budget cost of the program, Freeman said they will be minimal as no new teachers will need to be hired and the cost of the IB course exams will fall on the students. As with AP courses, the student and their family pay for the IB exams at the end of the year.
“Offering the IB courses doesn’t create more students so we are going to have to look at our scheduling a lot more thoughtfully,” he said. “We are going to have to be careful about how we begin to offer one more option but there are no staff increases related to this. There are some minimal cost associated with that teacher training and materials and membership in IB but as we do with AP, we also are going to expect the students and the families to share some of that cost.”
Overall, Misenti said he is excited to have this opportunity available to GHS students.
“This is a tremendous moment in time for our high school and our school system,” he said.