Secondary ARISVERSITY Module 1
This afternoon, ARIS Secondary Campus held its first ever ARISVersity for IB MYP and DP Parents. ARISVersity is a workshop designed for parents that adheres to the principle of Lifelong Learning. ARISVersity gives parents an in-depth understanding of the core values of the IB Framework – from Learner Profiles to Collaboration to Learning Goals/Objectives to Assessments and more. Speak the IB Language, understand the IB in depth, to better support your children!
Last Academic Year 2017/2018 graduated out first ever ARISVersity Batch at the PYP Campus. Upon completion of the 6 Modules in ARISVersity, parents earn a Certificate, and are qualified also to be students’ mentors in some cases.
Today’s ARISVersity was conducted primarily by Ms. Barbara Bilgre, our MYP and CAS Coordinator, and also supported by Mr. Harwell Asorwoe, our IBDP Coordinator and Mrs. Alpana Mukherjee, our Head of School. The first exercise given to parents was that, over a period of 3 minutes, they would have to write on their respective sticky notes what exactly they would want to achieve at the end of the 6-week ARISVersity Workshop. All parents had the universal goal of reaching a better understanding of their child’s progress, learning goals, assessments and to support their child(ren) more effectively!
Module 1, today, was on the IB Learner Profile; which started with a short video by the IBO explaining which attributes the 10 Learner Profiles aim at. Ms. Barbara Bilgre, over the hour, gave multiple exercises to the parents to complete. The first exercise was for parents to identify which Learner Profile or the 10 are the most important for life and which are the least.
After each parent wrote on the board, it was observed that each and every IB Learner Profile is vital to our holistic living in our everyday lives, at any given point of time. The question is, do we always model the attributes of all 10? We expect our children to model all 10 of the Learner Profiles, but as the discussions on the first task pointed out, it is important for us to model it for our children. We have to think of the Learner Profiles and its attributes in terms of our own lives as well.
This led to the next exercise, Ms. Barbara asked the parents to write down which IB Learner Profile traits apply to our own lives. Once they were written down, they would be shared and discussed – while some parents said ‘Principled’ and ‘Caring’, others said ‘Open-Minded’ and others said ‘Balanced’ and ‘Risk-Taker’. It was a reflective discussion which helped them realize how their attributes in modeling the Learner Profile can inspire their children as well inside the house and at school!
If you are an IB parent, ask yourself, which of the 10 IB Learner Profiles do you see yourself engage in daily? Let us all come together and create Global Citizens of tomorrow!
Stay tuned for the next Module of ARISVersity, which will be on ATL – Approaches to Teaching and Learning.
