What Happens When a School Lets Kids be in Control?

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Part of the attraction of the International Baccalaureate (IB) programme is that it cultivates independent thinking and motivation in its students, and there's hardly a better way to test that than letting the kids lead their own project. The Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU) week at the Canadian International School of Beijing (CISB) was just that: Students were given a week to come up with, develop and finally present a project that combines the knowledge and skills from two subjects.

Students displayed and explained their project to fellow students, teachers, as well as parents who were invited to the school for the first time since the pre-pandemic era.

It was exciting and nerve-wrecking for both students and staff when parents wandered through the school halls, savoring the experience of being on campus with their kids. As Paul Steffan, Middle Years Programme (MYP) Coordinator at CISB, put it, 

While the IDU project requirement isn't new, CISB's approach is unique. As Steffan explains, "Usually the burden of the IDU project falls on a couple of teachers who traditionally instruct the students over 6 - 8 weeks. But we wanted to do things differently last year, and we successfully accomplished this in one week. It was a lot of work but looking at the result, it was worth it, so we wanted to do it again."

Steffan continues, "One of the benefits of doing it this way is that we can gauge the level of success for the students' project more quickly. Teachers can give feedback and students can make changes promptly. Additionally, we also get teachers from different departments to interact more, which nurtures deeper understanding and appreciation for this process."

Of course, they don't just throw the kids into the deep end of the pool without support - teachers provide guidance where needed - but make no mistake, the projects are entirely the result of the kids' efforts as a team.

On behalf of her group, Grade 6 student Deekshitha Ake proudly told us, "Our team communicated really well and divided our work equally. The most important thing we learned was to balance the work among ourselves and understand each other's difficulties."

Grade 7 students April Huang and Alina Peng learned to recognize and make the most of each others' strengths, "We worked together a lot. I'm stronger at writing and she's stronger with making things, so we incorporated our skills to design the model and the tri-fold which I think is beautiful!"

At the same time, CISB gave students like Diego Laguda, also in Grade 7, the autonomy to do the project on his own when he asked to, simply because he "wanted to see if he could do it". And he certainly did. He also shared with us one thing he learned from the process, which is that "Modeling is hard!"

It wasn't just soft skills that the students learned either - Grade 10 student Quinn Young was thrilled to do actual fieldwork in filming, "I want to study film in university so I was really excited to learn about how to use the green screen; how to find the right camera angle and stuff like that. It was also really fun to learn about the historical characters and try to imagine how they would speak and act."

CISB's unique approach to IDU Week may raise some eyebrows, but the outcome says it all: the students and teachers love, and rise to, the challenge.

And what do the parents think?

Bruce Jin, father of grade 7 student Angelina, summarized his thoughts, "It feels much better to be back on campus to see firsthand what our kids are up to and who they're spending time with - this is where the action takes place! I've been amazed by the content that they have raised in class, from the biological balance of our eco-system to distribution of global resources. But the most important thing is the hands-on application of their knowledge, and I saw that when my daughter and her teammate, Nicole, built their Green Space from scratch. The IDU projects here are meaningful and the whole process really brings out independent and critical thinking in the kids."

Images: Vivienne Tseng-Rush

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