I told someone the other day that if Teachers Pay Teachers had been around when I started teaching IB first, I would have saved myself hours of anguish. After teaching for almost twenty years, I had my schtick down pat: I knew my texts like the back of my hand and had all kinds of lessons to use.
And then came the International Baccalaureate program. I had to learn eight new texts, wrap my head around the “IB way”, and prepare to get my kids ready to be assessed in high stakes final exams marked by an outside marker. The last point was the most stressful. Other than IB, we have no externally assessed exams, so I felt great pressure to “get it right” for my students. We kept telling our first class of IB students that they weren’t Guinea pigs, that we knew what we were doing…but we were lying!
All of this preparation on my part was going on as I taught my other classes; it was like being a first year teacher all over again: coming home and spending hours on the weekends and evenings just to stay ahead. We’ve all done it as a rookie, but it’s much harder to do when you’re a vet, used to being confident in what you are doing.
Which leads me to my point: I would love to help someone else who’s been in my situation. What kinds of resources do you wish you had? We all teach different texts, but I’m sure I could come up with some generic lessons that could be applied to multiple texts. If you have any ideas or suggestions for products or blog posts, please leave them HERE on this google form.
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