As the doors opened for a new year at Preston Hollow Elementary, students were also welcomed to another year of International Baccalaureate.
International Baccalaureate (IB) is better defined as an advanced curriculum that promotes cultural and global awareness through its program and encourages students to learn dual languages. The program is holistic and limited with there are only 181 IB schools and four in Dallas ISD alone
“The purpose for the program to get started here at this campus was because we wanted to have a program that gave our students an opportunity to learn about problems or things that are just a global effect affects us as humans globally,” IB coordinator, Araceli Hernandez, said.
The program was first introduced in the Spring of 2016 as a more intuitive academic approach and offers a different way of learning. At first, it was a process of embedding the Texas curriculum into the IB practices and intimidated a few teachers, shares Hernandez.
“We worked really hard on implementing the program, making sure that we would go into the classrooms modeling some of the standards and practices,” Hernandez said. “We really wanted to see students being welcomed in our classrooms at the beginning of the class, or teachers really worked really hard on greeting them in the beginning because that has a lot to do with their social-emotional learning.”
Through the IB program, students can be more engaged and active during lessons and the intercultural understanding helps them acquire knowledge of different cultures that aren’t offered at other schools. Throughout the school year, a key theme is interrogated in the lessons and this year’s theme was ‘sharing the planet.’
“I think that it is a great idea that we have IB because it helps us learn different skills and it helps you in communication and making friendships,” shared fifth-grade student Matthew Carranza. “My favorite part has been learning about the planet and how we need to water our plants and plant more trees.
Preston Hollow Elementary students Pre-K through fifth grade are taught French through a French instructor and a language curriculum software called Little Sponges. Their goal, as Hernandez puts it, is to have students reach fifth grade and be bilingual or trilingual as most of them speak English and Spanish.
“I know the parents were extremely excited and have been excited we have seen a growth even this year, for our student enrollment from previous years, our growth in our numbers has gone up,” Hernandez said. “We just want everyone to know that Preston Hollow is a school that is very unique because we have this program in our community.”
