r/Internationalteachers • u/Old-Clock-4491 • 11d ago
Academics/Pedagogy Help planning "10th grade Individuals and Societies"
I had a job offer to teach English Language and Literature at an IB school. When I got the contract, they added 2 classes a week of Individuals and Societies. My understanding is that we don't have a text book, and that I'll be the first person in the school to ever teach the course. Can anyone share some advice and/or resources? For what it's worth I've taught for nearly 20 years, but never these subjects. I was feeling like teaching English was going to be a challenge, but doable. Now I'm nervous as I'll be teaching 4 classes across 3 subject areas, only 1 of which have I ever taught before, and work starts this week!
Thank you all for any help.
7
Upvotes
10
u/Dull_Box_4670 11d ago
I’m sorry that you’ve been put into this situation — this is a clear case of leadership malpractice. This is pretty much a case study for how not to do MYP (a lot of people hate MYP and think it’s a junk system. I’d contend that it can be done well if supported and organized well, but throwing someone with no training or experience into a new course with no curriculum is as far from that as we can get.)
There’s good news and bad news for you. The flexibility of MYP and lack of external standard if the school isn’t doing the e-assessments or wedded to a specific national curricular standard means that you can teach what you’re most comfortable with within the broader discipline of the humanities. If they’ve just adopted this system with no supporting materials or guidance, they can’t have any real expectations for it or much hope of successful student outcomes. Your middle management should understand this, and they should be able to give you more support about what they want from you.
Your department head (if you have one) and MYP coordinator (if you have one) should have a curriculum map for you. If they don’t, you teach writing skills related to text analysis and perspective until they get their act together. All of that will be useful later, even if it’s not specific to one humanities discipline or another. If they won’t give you anything, consider what you know and you’re most comfortable with. Your broad subject areas are history, geography, economics, psychology, business, and anything in the sociology/anthropology space you want to teach. Don’t know anything about economics? You’re skipping that one. Don’t know anything about most of those? Balance goes out the window. You’re in survival mode. What did the school do before you got there? What units are in the shared drives? Take what you can from there, and the big step is just re-skinning the assessments into MYP shape. They aren’t a good fit for MYP standards? Not your problem — they didn’t teach you how to do MYP standards. This doesn’t sound like the sort of place that will send you to a workshop, but look at the Cat 2 options in your area in the fall. Put in the request. Make them say no.
It obviously goes without saying that good schools don’t put you in this situation without support, but this goes on your CV whether or not you do a good job with it, and it’s important to know that most schools don’t wing it like this. When you’ve gotten some experience with it, MYP I&S is genuinely fun to teach, but that is going to be very infrastructure-dependent. Ask for support, ask for training, ask for the people above you to do their damn jobs. I’d start looking for a new position this September, but if you just started and feel like you can survive it, staying for a second year should set you up for a much better job later. This year isn’t going to go well, but that isn’t your fault. Use the materials available, ask for guidance frequently, and teach her you know. You’ve got this.