Archive for November, 2008

Community and service

Monday, November 24th, 2008

Community and Service

 

It was exactly one year ago almost to the day, that I first visited Riverstone,

Of all the great things about the school, I have often said that the one thing that really stood out at that time was the sense of community.

 

This was brought home to me this weekend with all of the community and service activities occurring with our students, teachers and parents: The Middle School disco; the Staff Auction Dinner and Rake-Up Boise (ably organized by RIS senior, Lauren Henken).

 

Community and service are integral pillars of Riverstone and, indeed, the International Baccalaureate Organisation. We believe passionately that the world will be a better place if everyone had a strong sense of community and if everyone recognized the value of service to that community and the world in general.

 

After all, attending a school like Riverstone is indeed, a privilege and it is right that the gifted should give.

 

                                     I think therefore IB

Andrew Derry

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Ib Authorization

Wednesday, November 19th, 2008

Dear Friends,


As you are aware we have just hosted an IB MYP authorization team visit and the Directors and I met with them for their debrief session this afternoon.

The team will write a report and send it to the IB head office. A committee will meet to discuss our application and make a recommendation to the Director General in February. We will receive our report and decision on authorization shortly after (late February)

The report will contain ‘commendations’ for things we are doing well, ‘recommendations’ for areas we ought to look at and ‘Items to be addressed’ for the areas we must deal with in a given time frame.

Although strictly unofficial, it is fair to say that the team was highly impressed with our school, our mission, the quality of education and the support of the entire school community. They were especially praising (amazed was the word they used!) of how hard the faculty had worked and how much they had achieved in working towards the MYP in such a short time.

They also went out of their way to praise the support of the board and the parents for the school, international education and the IB in particular

The verbal report we received contained a couple of “items to be addressed” a few ‘recommendations’ and many ‘commendations’ (far more commendations than anything else)
And no surprises!
All in all we received very positive feedback.

There are still many things we need to do to make Riverstone the beacon International School in the west, and that is our goal, but this is a big step and one that lets us know we are moving in the right direction

 

We host the IB PYP authorization team in spring and hope to be the first and only school west of the Mississippi to be authorized for all three IB programs.

To put this in to perspective, there are currently 925 schools in the USA officially authorized to offer the IB
Of these, only 93 have been authorized to offer both MYP and DP
Only 6 in the entire USA have been authorized to offer PYP, MYP and DP

There are only 12 schools in the west that are authorized for MYP and DP
There are no schools in the west who have managed to achieve authorization for all three programs, PYP, MYP and DP

Andrew Derry

I think therefore IB

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What Really Matters 2

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

What Really Matters 2.

 

Traditional education revolves around the three Rs.

No, not reading riting and rithmatic as was the case when I was at school, but Repeat, Remember, Regurgitate.

 

We all remember those Maths classes when the teacher would show us a problem on the board (usually a chalk-smeared blackboard), we would do the next 40 problems from the text book (all similar), another 20 for homework. Then at the end of the section, we would be given a test of another 40 almost identical problems with which we were expected to score more than 90%.

 

The fact of the matter is that most educational systems were designed this way. Real life was divided in to artificial domains or subject areas. Tests were devised that allowed for the “brightest” (and by that we mean “best at remembering”) to succeed and for the rest to fail.

 

Teachers possessed the “knowledge”, they passed it on to the students in the order and manner they felt fit, the students remembered the knowledge and then regurgitated it on tests. The best students at this process, progressed, the others did not.  The more cynical among is might suggest that the old fashioned system of forcing students to Repeat, Remember, Regurgitate was considered a good way to discipline the young. It certainly put the teacher in a position of power in the classroom.

 

Fortunately modern brain and pedagogical research shows us how children think and learn best – and it’s not by the three Rs!

 

In the best educational systems, the old fashioned, knowledge based approach is replaced by skills based, contextual learning. In such systems the teacher is no longer the fount of all knowledge, but the facilitator helping each individual student to acquire the skills and concepts necessary to understand, to think, to adapt, to analyze and to do.

 

This is the underlying philosophy of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. Whether the PYP, MYP or DP programme, IB students are empowered to think and to do rather than to just know.

 

                                     I think therefore IB

 

 Andrew Derry

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Student Drama Production

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

Those of you who got to see the Love in Literature 101: Romeo and Juliet production over the weekend, will certainly have a better understanding of what makes Riverstone International School students so special.

This abridged Shakespeare classic was written and Directed by Rachel Cherny as part of her International Baccalaureate Theatre project and involved the considerable talents of Margaret Yang, Mitchell Hayes, Sam Steven, Melinda Quick, Jackson Sheedy, Jessie Sims, Charlie Utting. Scott Learned and Juliana Myhre with music provided by the incomparable Aled Roberts as part of his IB Music project.

It is no exaggeration to say that this was one of the best productions of Romeo and Juliet I have seen in a long time, and for someone who was brought up not 20 miles from Stratford upon Avon, the home of Shakespeare, that is praise indeed. 

Congratulations and thanks to all involved, you deserve great success with your IB exams.

 

Andrew Derry

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Yordanos addresses the IBO annual assembly

Friday, November 7th, 2008

Yordanos addresses the IBO annual assembly

Yordanos Refu, an Ethiopian refugee who graduated from Riverstone International School recently, addressed the packed assembly hall of the International Baccalaureate Organization annual conference in San Francisco in July.

1200 educators, administrators and politicians from around the world listened in awe as Yordanos spoke about the profound effect Riverstone and the IB had on her life. During her speech there was not a dry eye in the hall and at the end Yordanos received a standing ovation that lasted for minutes.

 

You can watch Yordonas’ speech at the IB’s facebook site:

http://www.facebook.com/video/?id=39945250074   (select Yordanos’ speech)

Yordanos is now studying at the College of Idaho and will be working as an alumnus volunteer at Riverstone with other refugees.

We are extremely proud of Yordanos and what she has achieved, as we are proud of all our students at Riverstone.

 

Andrew Derry

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