Thursday, August 15 Sessions
Note: If you are registering yourself, please inform your IB Coordinator.
Many schools pay teachers to attend workshops held on non-school days and coordinators must ensure they can track expenses and maintain their budgets.
Thank you!
Teresa Gloppen is the MYP coordinator at Andersen Middle School in Minneapolis Public Schools. With a background in Language and Literature as well as having an ESL license, she has always been passionate about language and literacy while thinking about scaffolds to support all students being successful. Students are hungry for opportunities to inquire and critically think. Assessment of your current implementation of the approaches to learning as well as students' awareness of approaches to learning development will support their agency in fully engaging in challenging work.
"How am I approaching learning with structures and commitments?"
In this session, you will self-assess your current implementation of the categories of ATLs: Communication, Social, Self-Management, Research, and Thinking. The percentage of how you spend your time over the course of the school year will show up after you finish the self-assessment. This can be a tool you regularly revisit. After this self assessment, we will explore the ways we support ATL development as well as investigate additional strategies and commitments to integration for the upcoming school year. You also will explore a similar self assessment tool that students can use in order to assess their comfort level with communication, social, self-management, research, and thinking skills.
MYP - full day August, 15th
Angela Wilcox has been the MYP Coordinator at Hopkins North since 2012 and an IBEN workshop leader since 2020. Angela's roles at North have focused on equity and learning transformation; in addition to the MYP coordinator and instructional coaching, she has been the restorative culture coordinator since 2018 and was the AVID building coordinator from 2016-2023. This school year, Angela was part of the team that created and taught the new 6th-grade Learning Design course for the first class of North Middle School 6th graders. Her focus on equity, inclusion, and transformative justice through education grounds her professional development work with teachers. This workshop will explore ways to shift our focus on the MYP unit planning process so that all learners are engaged and thriving.
Bringing the MYP Unit Planner to Life - for experienced IB teachers
How can we focus on the high-leverage elements of our MYP units to bring our statements of inquiry to life in the classroom? We'll dig into the "boxes" of the unit planner, work on specific approaches to teaching moves, and consider the service-as-learning outcomes as ways to plan for more authentic implementation of our MYP units. Half-day AM Session with afternoon work time.
MYP - full day August, 15th
Mac Nies teaches 6th grade math at Sanford Middle School, where she also leads the Equity Team and math department. She has six years of experience in teaching math in an MYP school. As a math teacher she believes that all students are capable of success. Her master’s degree in Trauma Informed Education provides a lens to create a learning environment where students feel safe, supported, and seen. Mac is a strong believer in the power of the MYP framework to create an education for students that is rooted in critical thinking, real-world connections, and collaboration. She loves helping students see all the ways math shows up in the world around them and helping students grow their math confidence.
Authentic MYP Assessment in a Math Classroom
A full day session that explores ways to incorporate MYP assessment into a math classroom with a specific focus on developing real world projects and rubrics. We will review MYP Math subject guide assessment criteria and rubrics, share examples, look at student work, answer questions and provide collaborative work time throughout the day. The goal will be to leave with an assessment and rubric with task descriptors ready to be taught in the fall. Come with a curriculum unit in mind and the top of a unit planner filled out to help yourself reach the goal by the end of the day.
MYP - full day August, 15th
Libby O'Connell is in her third year as MYP coordinator at Sanford Middle School. Before taking over as MYP coordinator, she was a math specialist and math teacher for 20+ years in Minneapolis and earned a masters degree from the University of Minnesota in Math Education. After attending MYP Math training in 2018, a light blub turned on to writing MYP math projects that connect MN state standards to real world situations to help show students how learning math can help them change the world. Since that time, she has collaborated with many math teachers to write projects and rubrics in each grade level and all math strands.
Correne Larsen has been a secondary counselor for 16 years, working in both Colorado and Minnesota, as well as for three years in India. She is currently a middle school counselor at Hopkins West Middle School, having just completed her 6th year in the district. She has counseling experience in IB programs at both the middle and high school level, and has chosen IB schools for her own children as she believes strongly in the IB model of education.
Jennifer Poncelet has been teaching middle school for 30 years. She started her career in Latin America, teaching five years in Honduras and Argentina. For the past 25 years she has been a Language & Literature teacher at Hopkins West Middle School, and became IB Coordinator in 2017. She also serves as a Peer Coach in the Hopkins district.
Utilizing ATLs and Learner Profile Traits in Whole-School Systems of Support
Approaches to Learning (ATL) Skills and Learner Profile Traits are an important part of middle school philosophy. In this session, we will explore ways that schools can utilize ATLs and Learner Profile traits in school-wide systems of support. We will identify what IB says about these important aspects of the MYP framework. We will share ways that ATLs and Learner Profile traits can be used outside of the classroom to build community and cohesion throughout the entire school.
This session is particularly focused on social workers, counselors, administrators, and others in non-teaching roles.
MYP - Half day AM (9:00 - 11:30)
August, 15th
Stephanie Liebhart is a Spanish teacher at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis Public Schools. She began her career in international schools in Korea and Abu Dhabi where she first encountered the IB. Stephanie has been teaching MYP Spanish for 16 years; the past 8 years have been in Minnesota. She has experience teaching all phases but has spent the most time with middle school students in Phase 1 and 2. Last summer, Stephanie attended Language Acquisition Category 3 MYP Training, which focuses on assessment.
Assessment in MYP Language Acquisition Courses
This session will begin with a brief overview of the four assessment criteria (Listening, Reading, Speaking, and Writing) and recent changes to them, followed by chances to ask questions about aspects of assessment that are confusing: rubric command terms, creating task-specific clarifications in student-friendly language, "best fit" approach and standardization, using formative tasks to prepare for summatives, etc. For the last part of the seminar, I will dedicate time to share some of my learning through reading "Common Ground: Second Language Acquisition Goes to the Classroom" because it shares many ways for students to bring their identity and voice into classroom tasks. The session will be interactive; participants will be asked to share about current assessment practices and tasks, so hopefully everyone will walk away with some new ideas!
MYP - Half day PM (12:30 - 3:00)
August, 15th
Kate Talafous is in her 4th year as PYP Coordinator in Fridley, MN and 18th year teaching in a PYP school. Her collaborative efforts with school staff have led to the development of numerous school-wide action projects at their school. These initiatives are centered around fostering student agency and forging strong community partnerships. With a passion for empowering learners, she is excited to share Stevenson Elementary’s process for developing a system for school-wide action.
Cultivating Change-Makers: A deep dive into action in the PYP
This session will explore a PYP elementary school’s (Fridley, MN) journey to enhance school-wide action. Participants will learn how to develop a systematic approach to school-wide action using the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s). Learn how our school-wide action has evolved over time to increase student voice and community partnerships. Examples will showcase actions that strengthen the school community, are sustainable, and promote local and global contexts. Participants will learn how Fridley Public Schools has enhanced service learning through school wide action. This session will be a combination of presenting background knowledge of our school’s journey and an opportunity for participants to develop a process for their own school context. Participants will walk away inspired with options for their IB scholars and an annual process for educators to guide school-wide action.
PYP - Half day PM (12:30 - 3:00)
August, 15th