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Harding School Embraces Hands-On International Baccalaureate Program
By Lara Cooper, Noozhawk Staff Writer | 
| Published on 02.14.2010
An elementary school on Santa Barbara’s Westside has been undergoing a quiet educational revolution for the past few months.
Teachers at Harding School, 1625 Robbins St., have signed on to adopting International Baccalaureate principles and are committed to getting the school IB-approved. It’s a movement that’s enlisted nearly a quarter of a million students worldwide, ranging from preschool to age 19.
In California, however, only 13 primary schools participate in the program. Dos Pueblos High School has participated in IB’s diploma program for a number of years.
“It’s very rigorous,” Harding Principal Sally Kingston explained of the primary school requirements.
The crux of the program lies in focusing on six concepts that transcend traditional disciplines, like math and science. The concepts encourage children to discover the answer to questions about who we are, how we express ourselves and how the world works. Teachers then organize existing curriculum and state standards into these categories.
Among the attributes the students will cultivate as they delve deeper into the program are becoming an inquirer, a thinker and a communicator. In addition to gaining a broader world view, they follow in-depth approaches to academic disciplines and develop time management, problem-solving, research and organizational skills.
Even though teachers began adopting the program only recently, for Kingston, the journey to IB began when she arrived at the school five years ago.
“When I got here, teachers were saying ‘Sally, there’s no joy,’” Kingston recalled to Noozhawk.
The conversation among faculty began to crystallize on how to get students learning, and not just going through the motions.
“Kids are natural learners,” Kingston said. “We started asking, ‘Why are they getting to school and disengaging?’”
Kingston and the Harding faculty looked at supplementing what was mandated to make it more exciting for students at the school with a hawk as a mascot.
After hearing about the IB program, Kingston proposed it to some of the teachers. Getting approved to be an IB school isn’t easy, she warned.
“It’s a huge commitment,” she said.
But the school’s teachers unanimously agreed to jump on board with the program and they went forward with a series of presentations to Santa Barbara School District trustees, who approved the idea.
Five teachers just returned from IB training, and the school is waiting to be approved in its first set of applications.
Harding must be approved by the Geneva-based International Baccalaureate Organization, and while the 500-student campus waits, the faculty is in the middle of initiating what Kingston calls a “whole school reform.”
“Everybody has to do it from your music teacher to your Spanish teacher,” she said.
The teachers are remapping all the school’s themes so they’re interdisciplinary and inter-global.
Instead of just learning about the California Gold Rush and America’s western migration, they’ll talk about the history of migration and why people move.
“Most of our kids have come from Mexico, so that’s a really important conversation,” Kingston said.
Even some of the smaller changes have had big effects at the school. Allowing students to check out an unlimited number of books from the library is important, and the library just received 12 new computers for research.
Fourth-grade teacher Jennifer Lindsay has started using IB principles in her class.
The students are encouraged to synthesize what they’re learning to answer larger questions about the world around them. Lindsay read her students the children’s book, Because of Winn-Dixie, and the children were encouraged to listen for themes.
They decided to do a service project and were inspired to make dog biscuits and donate them to several local animal shelters.
Another book the children read sparked the idea of starting their own store, where they sold pencils, erasers, bracelets and other tchotchkes.
When the students needed a $70 loan to cover their starter costs, they drafted a letter to the Harding School Foundation asking for a microloan.
In the end, they paid back the loan and then some, raising nearly $300.
Students even had to fill out job applications and interview with student teachers before getting their assignments, which ended up educating them on everything from math skills at the cash register to people skills when several of the students were asked to be managers at the store.
Art teacher Ryan Ethington admits incorporating IB with art is a bit of a challenge.
“It forces you to think bigger,” he said. “It allows you to design your own curriculum instead of being told what to do.”
Ethington got a chance to talk with the students about the IB attributes when they tackled an art project dealing with those words.
The letters, like “risk-taker” and “communicator” were made of wood and cut. Students painted them in bright colors and hung them around the school’s play yard, all while Ethington fostered a dialogue about how the kids could be communicators and risk takers.
Ethington, who taught at a charter school in San Diego before coming to Harding, said the IB program provides a wider lens for students than traditional curriculum.
“The perspective in scope is larger,” he said.
Click here for more information on Harding School. Click here to make a donation to the Harding School Foundation.
— Noozhawk staff writer Lara Cooper can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
Comments
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» on 02.15.10 @ 08:02 AM
“Most of our kids have come from Mexico, so that’s a really important conversation,”
Discussions about the costs of immigration to the taxpayer, and its deleterious effects on social cohesion should not be off-limits, given the frankness of the above admission.
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» on 02.15.10 @ 10:44 AM
You can hear an interview we did with UCSB Gevirtz School Dean Conoley on KCSB on this new partnership. http://www.radioip.org/2010/02/02/ed-dean-on-the-harding-univ-partnership/
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» on 02.15.10 @ 10:52 AM
Harding said? This author should go back to Harding!
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» on 02.15.10 @ 10:57 AM
I spoke to a couple of former Harding teachers who have since retired. All three said there was PLENTY of joy at the school before Kingston arrived. The test scores dropped under her guidance and the implementation of the IB was heavy-handed at the cost of dedicated personnel. I hope the program is successful for the students.
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» on 02.15.10 @ 04:33 PM
Once again I have to ask “What was so bad about the way kids were educated a few decaded ago before our test scores plummented?”
The one point about the old way of teaching kids that was obviousy wrong was the way European conquistadores (be they from England, Spain, or wherever) were portrayed as wonderful people who were dealing with hostile natives. Additionally, the sins of some (but not all) of our Founding Fathers were glossed over with regard to slavery and the treatment of those who were already here. Having said that, for the last few decades there has been the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater mentality among our modern educators who have a sort of Pol Pot-like Year Zero idealistic approach where they simply want to take the system in a new direction when in point of fact most of the old disciplines worked.
What I have seen in my 48 years of life—which includes going to a Catholic School in Chicago and public schools locally—is a major decline in the overall literacy and thinking skills of students. Once again, people with ideology borne out of the desire to correct past injustices feel that they simply have to do away with the old system when in point of fact the old system for the most part worked.
It also goes without saying that new technology and other such advances have to be incorporated into the curriculum.
I am suspicious of Kingston’s comment “Most of our kids have come from Mexico” because this indicates that what is happening here is that she is simply doing away with one ethnocentric way of thinking and replacing with yet another Mob Rule way of thinking.
On that same note, I would add that not all of the Founding Fathers were pro-slavery and if we are going to have an honest discussion about the history of race relations in the U.S., we must also include the fact the there was a shift in the way the ruling class thought hence the obvious result of the changes brought about by the civil rights movement.
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» on 02.15.10 @ 07:09 PM
Several posters here have latched onto Mrs. Kinston’s comment about most of the kids at Harding School coming from Mexico. Then these posters use her comment as a way to give their opinions on both immigration and on a perception that the quality of education has dropped.
However, the article is primarily about the IB program being implemented at Harding School. From what I have seen this program has been very good. The program is not intended to offend the founding fathers or to erode our shared cultural values. It is simply a way to try to teach young kids in a more effective way.
The changes implemented at Harding School absolutely should not be put in the contexts that these posters have put them in. The changes are about helping a school that has had problems and helping the kids at the school. If someone has a specific problem with the IB program then it would be appropriate to bring it up here.
I think it is wrong to use this article as a springboard for expressing views which are only tangentially related to the content of the article. Save it for a “tea party” meeting.
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» on 02.15.10 @ 07:27 PM
Obviously “decaded” meant to be “decades”.
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» on 02.15.10 @ 09:00 PM
If Harding can operate an academically intensive IB program that mainly benefits one demographic, why should the GATE program be criticized for an alleged demographic imbalance?
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» on 02.15.10 @ 11:26 PM
To Daniel. Your point was well taken until you launched your own springboard by asking to “save it for a tea party meeting!” I also stated that I hope the program was a success as I ultimately did not want to get bogged down in the misstatements by Ms. Kingston about a joyless Harding prior to her “arrival” and the possibility of poor reporting.
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» on 02.16.10 @ 12:02 AM
Per Daniel Zimmerman’s “tea party” comment. First of all, I do not go to Tea Party meetings so you have ascribed something to me that does not exist. The second point is that it was Ms. Kingston who raised the point of ethnicity—not us.
Furthmore, labeling children because of their ethnicity *is* an affront to shared cultural values. What about those kids who are not of the dominant ethnicity? How are *they* supposed to feel? The true civil rights warriors who put their lives on the line were trying to achieve a color blind society and reminding kids of their ethnic differences and teaching them accordingly is not in line with enlightened thinking.
Finally, you failed to address why our education system has tanked in the last few decades because doing so would be an admission that some of the supposedly enlightned educational methods have failed.
Obviously, some of us struck a nerve with you so you have to resort to putting labels on us that are not accurate.
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» on 02.16.10 @ 04:41 AM
Why are dolphins so smart?...because they travel in schools.
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» on 02.16.10 @ 10:48 AM
Mrs. Kinston’s comment about Harding students mostly being from Mexico is true. Most students and/or their parents come from Mexico—-I believe above 90%. You can check the exact numbers on line. This is not a bad thing either—it just makes the learning of English more of a challenge then at some other schools. This challenge is usually met and most kids are fluent in English after a few years.
Some of these comments did strike a nerve with me.
My child goes to Harding School. I, along with other members of my family volunteer in her class 1 time per week. The kids in class are smart, nice, and eager to learn. I play music for the kids and three kids have already written their own lyrics so that I can sing their songs in class. Her teachers have all been very good and work very hard with the kids.
In my opinion the only thing that should be said about this program at Harding school is that we “hope it is a success” as Gharles S said. The kids at the school deserve a successful program—-to me, the issue is all about helping to give the kids an excellent education so they can be successful in the world.
Let’s back the program up and try to make it an even better school—-doing this helps everyone in our community.
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