With next year’s change in the IB English
curriculum, sophomores wonder which teachers will be in what classes, how many
students there will be in each class and what each class will entail.
The
teachers for the classes will be determined by how many students have signed up
for each class, information that has not yet been processed. Students will not
know what teacher will teach their class until next year.
English
teacher Anne Christensen liked the idea of creating three separate IB English
classes because it will challenge all students, and new classes will offer
opportunities to learn higher-level language skills. Christensen was concerned,
however, that the IB program might be too fast, and some students might not be
up to the challenge.
The change was no single teacher’s idea,
but one that evolved through conversation inside the entire English
department.
“Mrs.
Roesch talked to us…whether or not we were interested in those new offerings,
and there was a lot of conversation. So it was kind of a group of teachers’
idea,” English teacher Kerry Thomas said.
Thomas
said the English department wanted to insure that all students have access to
the rigorous IB curriculum. One of the reasons the International Baccalaureate Organization
dissolved Language A1, what we currently know as IB English, into three
separate classes was because not all students wanted to take literature, and
many have different needs.
Most sophomores questioned planned to
take IB Language and Literature, a class focusing on language in the media and
how it affects the reader. They want to take this class because it looks like
the easiest.
Sophomore Simon Elliott, however,
disagrees.
“I’m taking [IB literature] because even
though it looks like the most challenging course, it also looks like the most
practical one,” Elliott said.
Like
Elliott, most students who signed up for IB Literature said they did so feeling
the class would have more future value than the alternatives, IB Literature and
Performance arts and IB Language and Literature.