October is a busy month in the International Baccalaureate calendar for schools on a November exam schedule such as Futuro Verde. Grades for internal evaluations have to be submitted, along with the required supporting materials. Internal evaluations come in different forms: individual orals about works of literature; interactive or group orals; research projects in Business Management, Biology, and Math; the Visual Arts exhibition; and musical creating and performing. This year our students have composed music, performed, exhibited their works of art and undertaken research projects about the correlation between sports activity and academic achievement, whether a local hotel should target the holistic wellness segment of the hospitality industry, and to determine if there is a correlation between cases of Tuberculosis and the Human Development Index (HDI) in Europe. Internal evaluations are assessed by Futuro Verde teachers according to IB criteria, with samples of assessed student work being sent to the IB organization for moderation. This is how the IB organization assures that students from different schools are assessed as fairly and equally as possible.
The variety of projects that our students undertake and the support they receive is in no small part due to the qualifications, expertise, and experience of our teachers at Futuro Verde. This is just one of the key strengths and unique selling points of Futuro Verde compared to other institutions in the area. Our teachers are specialists, all of them possessing degrees in their areas of knowledge, be those in early childhood education, primary education, special education, science, math, business, and languages, etc. Many hold advanced degrees, sometimes in more than one area of specialty, and a high proportion has earned masters degrees in education. Add to that the experience they bring from all over the world and our students have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw from.
Our teachers are authentic lifelong learners and Futuro Verde supports all of them to be so. IB requires that teachers giving instruction in diploma program subjects have attended Category 1 workshops, which are either face-to-face or online. Going one step further, we have just registered our teachers for multiple advanced Category 2 and 3 workshops which will take place over the next six months. In September we were visited by Dr. Mia Sosa-Provencio and her team from the University of New Mexico (USA) as they worked with all our teachers from preschool to 12th grade to develop collaborative classroom strategies featuring Latin American narratives of struggle and resilience amid structural oppression. Every year we hold the Bilingual Holistic Sustainable Educational Conference and this year we were lucky enough to have David Rogers, Executive Director for Dual Language Education of New Mexico, as our keynote speaker. The success of BHS this year led to David inviting and sponsoring our teachers, by waiving the registration fee, to attend La Cosecha conference in New Mexico, USA. We are excited about all that our attendees are going to learn and bring back with them!
