IBARMS
Rocky Mountain Association of IB World Schools
Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year and IBARMS! If you are new to IBARMS, welcome! If you are a returning member, welcome back! The Rocky Mountain Association of IB World Schools (IBARMS) is your primary resource for support of your IB Programme(s), coordinators, students, teachers, administrators, and community! This newsletter will introduce you to the resources available to our member schools and highlight some of the offerings that IBARMS will make available throughout the school year. We hope you will join us at our three association meetings this year, as they are the best opportunity to meet your IBARMS support system, connect and network with other coordinators, teachers, and administrators, and to collaborate on ways to implement the IB programme(s) at your school.
IBARMS Meeting Dates and Locations
- Friday, September 27 - Douglas County Legacy Campus on Lincoln, just east of I-25
- Thursday, December 5 - Adams 12 Conference Center
- Friday, February 7 - Adams 12 Conference Center
For more information and to register for the September 27 meeting, click here!
Join Today!
If you haven't done so already, make sure you join IBARMS for the 2024-2025 school year! Membership gives you access to the entire IBARMS network of support, that includes IB coordinators and administrators in public and independent schools in Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Utah! Click here to join today!
IB Training in Keystone!
Join us in beautiful Keystone, Colorado in June 2025 for official IB training! We will have session offerings for PYP, MYP, DP, CP, IB Leadership, and IB Education. Click here to see the workshops that will be offered next summer!
Rocky Mountain PYP Coordinators,
You are invited to commit with me, to a year of open-minded collaboration around PYP practice. I’m Esther Croak, serving as your IBARMS PYP representative, aiming to generate a sense of renewed hope and purpose among us.
Dynamic support information will be shared via this newsletter before and after each of our three association meetings. The most important support information currently, is that the IB is rolling out program updates. You will want to be aware of these updates as you lead your school’s implementation. The best starting point is to read and share the document ‘Preparing for the new PYP Subject Guidance’. You will see that your school can implement changes starting now, and will also have until September of 2027 to do so. You will also note that subject continuums, a language learning pathway guide, inquiry progressions, a curriculum design kit and other support materials will be published as well.
The association meetings themselves, will provide time for professional learning, collaboration and support. My hope is that we can continue to strengthen the relationships among coordinators as we serve in a unique role at our individual sites. Our first meeting will be devoted to deepening our understanding of the new PYP subject guidance. I’ll share what I learned about the subject guidance at the IB Global Conference in Washington DC this summer, and we will work together to figure out how to transition our schools in our region. This meeting comes with an invitation to bring an administrator with you, strengthening our regional association by bringing awareness to what we offer in terms of collaboration opportunities and a collective voice within the IB Americas region, as well as our New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming state education systems. I’ve invited my Assistant Principal and hope you will bring someone from your school leadership as well.
PYP IBARMS learning opportunities that you can share with staff will include roundtables, a symposium, and summer workshops in Keystone. Please bring ideas for roundtable discussions, as well as willingness to host roundtables, going forward. You can email me or voice them at our first meeting.
Your role at your school might include onboarding teachers and staff new to IB and PYP. If you are looking for PYP induction materials, you are welcome to use or build on IBARMS PYP Inductions done in the past. Access to shared materials is a benefit to IBARMS membership that we are excited to offer. Please know that I’ll be updating sharing permissions in coordination with our current membership, so don’t hesitate to request permission to share if these resources aren’t already available to you.
Finally, I’d like to make all of our IBARMS schools aware of an opportunity made possible by Kelsey Day, our IB World Schools Manager. Kelsey is dedicated to helping us navigate how to approach language learning in our PYP schools as expectations and adopted materials in many districts have made it challenging to continue past practice. Please see her invitation to join a Teams meeting virtually below.
October 1st
Time: 5:00 PM Pacific
Join fellow PYP leaders from both California and Colorado on October 1st at 5:00 PM Pacific time to discuss language acquisition in the PYP. We will discuss challenges, opportunities and challenge each other to think outside of the box. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Please do not hesitate to reach out with any ideas or questions.
Welcome Back MYP Coordinators!
We are Alex Armstrong and Emily Heinrich and we will be your IBARMS MYP representatives for the 2024-25 school year. We hope that you all had a restful and recuperative summer break and that your school year has started out strong. We are looking forward to working with you this year. To help us get to know you better and make sure that we are meeting your needs and concerns in our time together, please take a few moments to complete this survey. We hope to see you at our first quarterly meeting, where we will be reviewing the MYP Crash Course resource that was shared with you by Jan Lotter. Jan will also be joining us to share updates from the Global Conference on the Enhanced MYP project. Please do not hesitate to reach out to IBARMS with any MYP questions or concerns you may have.
Diploma Programme
Hello, DP and CP coordinators! I'm Melissa Knight, the DP and CP coordinator at Discovery Canyon Campus High School. This is my 4th year in that role and my 2nd as the DP/CP level rep for IBARMS.
New coordinators, don't forget to check your students' schedules to ensure they have everything they need!
A few updates for all as we hit the ground running in the 2024-2025 school year:
The following subjects are getting updated guides, with first new teaching of 2-year courses starting in fall 2025: Psychology, Computer Science, Design Technology, Visual Arts, and Extended Essay. The first new assessments will take place in May 2027.
Transition to digital exams:
May 2025: specimen exam materials released for Lang & Lit and Language acquisition, in English, French, and Spanish.
May 2026: a small number of schools will participate in the first digital exams
November 2026: schools can choose to opt into digital exams from this point forward. The transition to all exams will be flexible with the goal of meeting schools where their technology is.
Career-related Programme
New guides for the entire CP core will be released in February 2025! This means the CP class of 2027 will have an entirely different and improved experience.
Language development is becoming Language and cultural studies.
Service learning is becoming Community engagement.
The Reflective project only receives minor tweaks.
The Personal and professional skills class will be restructured with a focus on skills rather than themes.
DP or CP Questions? Please don't hesitate to reach out to me at melissa.knight@asd20.org
