The international experience will soon be available to Columbus students from start to finish.

Instructors from the program were at Columbus High School Wednesday and Thursday to train 6th-10th grade teachers and administrators in the nonprofit educational foundation”s Middle Years Program.

International Baccalaureate is a student-centered and international-minded method of learning. The Primary Years Program and Middle Years Program provide frameworks through which state standards are taught, while the IB Diploma program is a curriculum, but leaves high schools the flexibility to include state and local emphases.

Sale Elementary International Studies Magnet School has been preparing for its IB evaluation in August after three years of implementing the program”s suggestions. If approved, it will become the third IB elementary school in Mississippi. CHS is a fully authorized IB Diploma school. The “middle” grades, 6th-10th, will begin implementing IB protocols and will apply for approval in two years.

If approved for the Middle Years Program, CMSD will be the first district in the state to have all three programs in place.

Jim Mahoney, field director for IB, who works out of Colorado Springs, Colo., was at CHS Thursday to monitor the instruction sessions, which included separate classes for each academic subject, physical education and administrators. He describes the essential elements of IB studies as being student-centered and internationally-minded.

The international aspect was born in 1964 from a need to create a diploma which is recognized by universities around the world. The IB Diploma program is more academically rigorous and seeks to present instruction in a global context.

“People think we”re going to bring in a foreign way of thinking, but before you can understand another culture you have to understand your own,” Mahoney said. “And if those are the things I believe and how I live, then who shares those things? Who”s different?”

One example of this principle at work is literature.

“The diploma program doesn”t dictate as far as what books you have to teach, but you can”t just do (author William) Faulkner or Tennessee Williams. You”ve got to have Asian authors or South American authors or European authors,” Mahoney said.

Across all grades, the program”s goal is to provide students a deeper meaning of the causes and consequences of history, not simply the names and dates which can be memorized and quickly forgotten.

Michael Urquhart, an IB instructor from Australia, says the Middle Years Program will continue the global perspective introduced at Sale.

“We want students to relate what they”re learning in Mississippi with what people are learning in China or Europe,” he said.

As Mahoney says, the point of IB is to provide context, not shift the focus outside the United States. In fact, the program promotes an emphasis on the U.S. and the students” region, including a community service component.

“Students learn to think, ”I”ve learned something in my class. Now what can I do with that?” Whether through single or group action with peers, or church or the Scouts, we teach them at every stage: ”If I”m five, what does it look like to give back to my community. If I”m a teen, what does it look like to give back to my community,”” said Mahoney.

The other half of IB instruction seeks to boost the involvement of the primary beneficiary, the student. Through a process called inquiry-based instruction the program seeks to give students a greater voice.

“It”s the idea of including children”s natural questions about what they”re learning. As we engage children, they”re able to inform us (what types of instruction are effective). If they don”t see the connection to their real lives, if they can”t connect how I”m going to use this (they say to themselves) ”I don”t know if I”m going to learn this or not,”” said Mahoney.

The idea of asking students what they want to learn about a particular subject represents a paradigm shift in learning, but it”s one Mahoney says is supported by research.

IB doesn”t measure its own results. It leaves that to independent bodies, which Mahoney says have shown time and again that IB students perform better on state tests and in college. Additionally, he says non-IB schools which have implemented inquiry-based learning have achieved similar results.

“If the bottom line is student performance, this will change that because this changes how teachers teach. If you do these things you”ll get results,” he said.

The IB Diploma denotes such a high standard, Mahoney says, that IB graduates in Colorado enter college as sophomores, and in Florida IB students receive a free ride scholarship to any state school.

He says Mississippi is considering similar incentives related to the program.

The radical changes in teaching strategies entailed in IB necessitate on-site training for teachers. Educators at CHS Wednesday and Thursday received 12 credit hours of Continuing Education Units toward their state certification, but they”ll continue their own IB training for years as Columbus works toward Middle Years Program certification.

Terry Turnage, a CHS teacher who will teach the Middle Years Program to tenth graders in Algebra II, Accelerated Algebra and IB Math Studies, has used the IB curriculum for the past three years in her juniors and seniors. Thursday she took a class on how to build units which apply learned skills to real-life situations to foster retention. She says the IB method has created tangible changes over the past few years. The class of 2011 will be the first class to receive IB diplomas.

“We”ve seen a lot of good changes over the years. For instance, we instituted Small Learning Communities so kids can find a niche where they belong,” said Turnage.

Deneen Sherrod applied IB critical thinking skills to her entrepreneurship class at CHS last year in developing their own marketing strategies for fictional inventions.

“Instead of telling them what to do we give them the tools and let them create their own exit project,” said Sherrod.

Administrators also need training in order to oversee the program”s proper implementation.

“It”s important for heads of schools to be well-versed in the program,” said Parfait Awono, an IB instructor from Cameroon who lead the administrators class with Urquhart. “When they have conversations with their teachers, they have to know exactly what the program is all about and how to do it.”

Jason Browne was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.

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