Reflecting on the PYP Coordinator Role

Our school recently moved to a multi campus facility offering the PYP. Although only a 5 minute drive at times it would seem eons apart. Our remit to keep one school one vision at the heart of decision making. My new role moved me from the PYP coordinator within our original campus to overseeing PYP across our two campuses. My initial thoughts were how to keep a mirror image happening on both campuses. But this tension reached breaking point when I realized innovation could never happen if I was constantly saying no to people.

Together with the head of school improvement I undertook a protocol to clarify my thinking on how to embrace the role and define it for myself. Like all good PYP teachers I started my inquiry with some independent research, reaching out to fellow PYP coordinators in Saudi Arabia and Thailand for advice on their past experiences. These conversations were rich with ideas around pedagogical coaching, collaborative PD, and a mission driven approach. To my delight they were also not one sided, sharing other practices around ATL’s and documentation also surfaced so I felt I had not only asked questions but contributed to others as well. What interested me about my research questions is that I had an idea of what the answers might be but asking an expert established my confidence in what I believe in and valued the most.

The next step was to apply a bridge protocol to go further. The head of school improvement facilitated a Back to the Future model. I would speak in present tense 2024 and talk to her as if it were the day of our next evaluation visit and she was the visiting IB school visitor. The big themes which came through as she probed with questions were, induction coach, monitoring of written curriculum and facilitator of collaborative PD. The first words which I used were around innovation which would become important as we went further into the protocol

The next stage was to talk about the past, what is was like before covid, before the benefits of online learning, before our second campus. It was astonishing to me as I stood back from my two anchor charts that the past was so linear almost like a checklist and the future chart looked more like a system with arrows and loops. I also reflected on how much I was trying to protect the curriculum which had been built over a decade by previous coordinators and the loyalty I had to maintain the systems in place. It was the fear of changing anything which meant I was not being loyal to myself and my own ideas for innovation. Thinking more deeply I realized the areas where I had innovated, around documentation advocating for toddleapp, I had in fact taken steps which resulted in an overhaul of portfolios, samples of learning, online learning and reporting.

The final stages of the protocol involved bridging the divide between past and future and looking at potential obstacles.

Big take aways for the future are we have a shared ownership of curriculum. The PYP coordinator is more like the curator of other people’s ideas and beliefs about learning.

Vision

Collaboratively develop a world class and best possible curriculum to fulfill the learning needs of all students.

Nothing for us students without us students!

Mission

Create a PYP school curriculum which innovates, built on student voice, transdisciplinary learning

Values

Continuous learning

Risk taking

Failure is learning

Celebration