Click photo for IB Diploma Programme information.
IB Science instructor Marc Whitley with students

Aspen School District is an International Baccalaureate World School District

This summer, ASD was authorized to offer the IB Primary Years Programme (PYP), which now makes ASD an IB School District.

Last summer, ASD secured authorization to offer 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.

Aspen Elementary School earns International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme authorization
inquiry

Aspen School District is now a fully integrated Pre-K-12 IB School District
This summer, Aspen Elementary School was authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme - an educational framework that aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.
The PYP authorization makes Aspen School District an IB School District - the only one in the state of Colorado - that provides a fully integrated IB curriculum from Pre-K to 12th grade for all students in the district.
In the authorization letter from International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) Director General Olli-Pekka Heinonen said: “We commend your school’s educators, administrators, students and families for their active roles in choosing to offer the PYP.”
Last summer, Aspen Middle School was authorized as an IB Middle Years Programme. Aspen High School has offered the IB Diploma Programme since 2001.
Superintendent Tharyn Mulberry, who led the IB teams through the curriculum development and implementation process, said a fully aligned Pre-K-12 educational program is transformative.
“We believe that a high-quality curriculum should be given to every student and they should have access to that,” Mulberry said. “We are very excited that we will be one of the first school districts in the country to be a fully integrated and aligned IB school district.”AES Principal Ashley Bodkins said the journey students, staff and families have taken to become an IB Primary Years Programme has been incredible.
“All participants have put in a great deal of time and effort learning the framework, developing units, writing policies and understanding what it means to be a PYP school,” she said. “The most rewarding part of the process is the outcomes for our students. They have fully embraced the Learner Profile (attributes of a successful learner) in their everyday language in the classroom, on the playground and at home. Students take ownership of their learning through inquiry based units.”ASD Director of IB Continuum and Student Learning Harpreet Mehta explains that PYP, the last piece of the ASD IB puzzle, offers an inquiry-based, transdisciplinary curriculum framework that builds conceptual understandings and knowledge and develops the skills and values as a connected whole. 
“It is a student-centered approach to education for children,” she said. “Every learner in a PYP school will always have some of the IB Learner Profile traits at one time or another. This makes learners see themselves as successful and adept - therefore having self-efficacy.”The IB curriculum provides opportunities to inquire into human commonalities through units of inquiry and daily practice to build international mindedness, Mehta said. The assessment within this framework is rigorous and celebratory; and at the same time it is also taken to inform instruction instead as a measure of teacher and student success.
Mehta said that research has now proven that PYP students have excellent outcomes in national assessments (Key findings from global research on the impact of IB Programmes) because there is increased use of inquiry, student voice, global perspectives, open mindedness, individualization in instruction, celebration of diverse student accomplishments, student engagements-relationships-agency-ownership of learning, teacher and parent engagement and reflections. 
“We have great teachers who are passionate about what they do in the classroom,” she said. “Aspen Elementary School teachers are really caring and really involved and they create and trigger that curiosity of students. Our students have the right conditions to be able to prepare themselves for the new global economy and the evolving canvas.”