Farmington Schools IB program off to a good start

When teacher Liz Miller traveled to California in July, it changed everything about the way she teaches.

Miller went to California for training to teach in new International Baccalaureate program, which launched at Harrison in September, with 110 freshmen.

“I felt for the first time like, ‘This is what I’ve been saying. This is what students need to learn,’” Miller said.  “We’ve all known that education has to change, but we didn’t know how.”

For example, in foreign language classes, the old manner of teaching was to focus on writing, but not on speaking. In IB, she focuses not only on speaking but on offering students what she calls “authentic tasks,” like having 10-minute conversations with native Spanish speakers.

She’s excited about the prospect of sharing this style of teaching with her peers who are not teaching IB classes. It has made her look at how to change the way teachers teach. And her colleagues are interested too, she said during a report to the Farmington Public Schools Board of Education Nov. 2. Miller said her peers are saying of IB teaching methods, “If that’s good for IB kids, that’s good for all kids.”

Harrison principal Aaron Johnson said the IB program is changing the entire school.  Murals and paintings now adorn the school’s hallway walls. Students from five continents attend the IB, and there is a new energy at Harrison, he reported.

But the energy came after a to phase out the district’s participation in the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills. The International Academy offers a nationally lauded international baccalaureate program. The district sent 60 students at a cost of $500,000 per year.

In September 2009, a committee formed by the district to explore an in-district IB program presented a plan to the board. The plan would have been to open a Farmington IB program with a school for kindergarten-eighth grade students, and a high school program.

But then the district faced a budget crisis, assistant superintendent Catherine Cost said.

“It was too drastic to implement an IB program,” Cost said. So in November 2010, the board – after contentious public meetings – voted to phase out participation in the Academy and spend the $500,000 annually on providing the IB program to far more students. The board chose Harrison as the location for the new program.

Johnson said that the program has been so tremendous that  “handling the controversy was worth the positive impact.”

The IB is a program for grades 11 and 12, but students start preparing in the 9th grade, said IB coordinator Polly Bachrouche.

The 30 teachers who, along with Miller, were trained in the IB education method, spent six days in August planning the IB curriculum. The first two years follow a standard curriculum, except for the addition of a “dialogues in diversity” class, which has in the past been offered at . But it’s never been offered to freshmen, and it’s never been offered to a such a great number of students, Bachrouche said.

Bachrouche is meeting with middle school students and their parents, and said she expects that there will be even more interest in next year’s incoming class of IB students.