Aspen School District is now a fully integrated and aligned International Baccalaureate School District
This summer, ASD was authorized as an IB Primary Years Programme (PYP), which now makes ASD an IB School District.
Last summer, ASD secured authorization for the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) for grades 6-10. Aspen High School already was an authorized IB Diploma Programme school.
“This is huge for us,” said Tharyn Mulberry, ASD Superintendent who led the district's goal of IB for all. “A completely aligned preK-12 curriculum ensures a continuum of programs, education philosophy and a consistent approach to learning across the grades. We are thrilled to offer this strong educational program to all of our students – it’s both rigorous and inclusive.”
Why did ASD want to pursue IB as a district-wide curriculum?
“IB programs are aligned with ASD’s longtime educational philosophy of lifelong learning, critical thinking and learning for understanding,” said Sarah After IB MYP Coordinator. “Becoming an IB school district fits well with the best parts of our school district and pushes us to work together to become even better. We strive to provide high quality experience for all our students so that we can encourage them to be caring, inquiring, and reflective learners.”
ASD has had the IB Diploma Programme (DP) for grades 11 and 12 since 2001.
“Pockets of the district had been thinking about adding the MYP and PYP for years, and we officially entered the consideration stage in 2020,” After said.
Having a true PreK-12 aligned curriculum allows teachers to follow the progress of students through the grades. For example, in the 2023-24 school year, students in grade 8 worked on community projects. They will work on a personal project in grade 10 and teachers can see the growth and skills they learned through those years.
Further, After explains, “the skills learned through the long-term projects will be used by students for the Extended Essay in the Diploma Programme.”
Although there are other schools in Colorado that have a continuum of PYP, MYP, and DP, because ASD is small, it will be the first district that we know of that is fully IB in Colorado, After said.
How ASD earned authorization:
AES and AMS teaching teams began training in the fall of 2021 and then met weekly to discuss IB philosophy, approaches to teaching and learning, and the PYP and MYP unit framework.
Teachers collaborated to blend the Colorado Academic Standards, the district curriculum resources, and the PYP and MYP learning objectives into documented units. In 2022 ASD implemented the use of Toddle platform, a curriculum planning tool that has been developed specifically for IB schools. This tool has been extremely beneficial for teachers' collaboration on units across grade levels and content teams.
