91²Ö¿â

[Kristin Gammell, Senior, Early Childhood Education] 91²Ö¿â is a very renowned education program. They set up their teachers to succeed.

[Hannah Harris, Graduate, Early Childhood Education] KSU always has had an excellent reputation and tradition for their early childhood education program.

[Danielle Feeney, Graduate, Early Childhood Education] Right now I have over a thousand hours in the classroom already, just as a graduate.

[Kristin Gammell] I feel as though I have gained valuable information and resources to become a successful teacher.

[Hannah Harris] When I graduated, I felt like a prepared teacher.

[Colleen Mudore, International Baccalaureate Coordinator, Westlake School District] 91²Ö¿â offering the IBPYP Certificate for their early education students is a great opportunity. There's very few - I think there's actually ten colleges in the world that offer that certificate. It gives them an advantage that many students aren't going to have, especially in the United States. But the Primary Years program is just best practice teaching; so whether those students end up teaching in an IB school or not, they are learning best practices that they can take into any school.

[Hannah Harris] What Kent's program is based on is inquiry-based learning, where children give input into what they want to learn and how they want to learn. And IB's philosophy is the same way. They're about inquiry, and child-centered, -based learning.

[Colleen Mudore] The International Baccalaureate program has four different programs. PYP is the Primary Years Programme. The Primary Years Programme is preK to typically fifth or sixth grade. The PYP program benefits children because it's teaching them to be problem-solvers and inquirers. It's taking all the best practices and kind of molding it all together.

[Hannah Harris] I've learned that it allows children a new way to think and a new way to learn.

[Danielle Feeney] It's discovering, and it's giving students opportunities to find them on their own rather than just speaking of them.

[Daniel Castner, Teacher, Indian Trail IBPYP World School / Graduate, KSU Early Childhood Education] We're not just teaching to raise test scores, but also teaching in ways, and planning our instruction in ways, that the aims are geared towards meaningful learning experiences.

[Danielle Feeney] I don't see my students as their scores on standardized tests. I see them as someone who can discover what they're looking for. They can find answers themselves, they can ask questions.

[Hannah Harris] In my Block 4 classroom, we did a lot with the Learner Profile Attributes: Reflective, Caring, Open-Minded, and there's other ones. And we presented the attributes in a way through books and literacy and read-alouds.

[Kristin Gammell] I was in a kindergarten classroom, and I would read a story, and for five- and six-year-olds to be able to sit down and talk about a main character being an inquirer, or being reflective, or a risk-taker... It was really inspiring to have such rich conversations with five- and six-year-olds.

[Hannah Harris] Reflective and Open-Minded and Principled, those are big words for kindergarten students to use, but they really started to grasp the idea, and as they began to learn how to read, they would pull those attributes into the characters themselves - say, "Well, that's not a very friendly lion. He stepped on a mouse!"

[Colleen Mudore] There's many components to IBPYP. Part of it is action - so having students take action outside of school, within school - but rather than the teacher saying, "We're going to do a bake sale and raise money and give it to this charity," we're asking the students to come up with those plans.

[Kristin Gammell] International mindedness means that kids are open to new perspectives. They're open to new possibilities, new cultures.

[Hannah Harris] It helps the students to learn about these cultures, and it helps them to be more accepting of the people around them.

[Danielle Feeney] Teaching the kids not to just think about where they are, but the whole world and what's going on, and how those people are similar yet different.

[Hannah Harris] The PYP program is important to me because it's a unique way for students to learn. It's a unique way for them to explore the world around them, get used to being inquisitive and thinking outside the box.

[Kristin Gammell] My expectations now are really for children to develop their own learning, rather than me just teaching. I want them to be curious about the world around them and to wonder why and really investigate the world. I want them to develop that passion in life and really evolve their thinking around that.

[Daniel Castner] As IB came to become a part of my teaching career later on, it really was an easy fit for me because of several ways that 91²Ö¿â had prepared me.