Kujawa Education Center Educators Collaborate With Houston Area IB World Schools

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[dropcap color=”#888″ type=”square”]I[/dropcap]nternational Baccalaureate (IB) program educators at the [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]Kujawa Education Center spent a part of their summer training.

Aldine ISD offers the entire [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]IB continuum: Primary Years Program (PYP), Middle Years Program (MYP) and Diploma Program (DP). Kujawa EC/PK Center and Kujawa Elementary School comprise the Center. Both offer the Primary Years Program and are IB World Schools.

Kujawa educators attended a two-day professional development/collaborative opportunity held at Houston ISD.

Linda Johnson coordinated with Anna Elizabeth “Liz” Goodman to make this possible. Johnson and Goodman are IB coordinators at Kujawa and River Oaks Elementary, respectively.

The first day took place at five campuses including River Oaks Elementary School. Topics of discussion included inquiry, authentic product assessment. Training also covered concept-based learning, authentic work product, and mathematics. Kujawa specialty teachers attended the final session at River Oaks Elementary School. They worked with other educators in their discipline. Everyone collaborated and planned high quality learning opportunities for students.

The final day of training took place at River Oaks Elementary. Sally Stow and Alexis Comardo teamed up to give their presentation. They serve as a music teacher and technology specialist at the campus. They talked about developing unit planners to support the PYP curriculum. The planners also support the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) standards.

Samantha Mansour enjoyed the training. She is the IB specialty team leader at Kujawa.

“The experience was an excellent opportunity to [icons icon_name=”icon-external-link” icon_size=”14px”]collaborate with others,” said Mansour. “The presenters did a fantastic job sharing their knowledge in their area of expertise.“

Many who attended, like Kelly Patterson, agreed that the training was helpful. She is a learning through the arts teacher at Kujawa.

The Center’s specialty IB teachers aspire to continue collaborating with IB educators. They plan to visit other PYP schools to examine their approaches to learning in action.

“Collaboration is a great to enhance the IB program at Kujawa,” Johnson said. “The goal is to continue to give students a great PYP experience.“

Kujawa Center staff that attended the professional development/collaborative opportunity included Bonnie Martínez, Lakiesha Steath, Andrea Ross, Emily Hughes, Jenita Thomas, Kelly Patterson, Linda Sam Mansour, Cynthia Graff; and Linda Taylor.