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I have had the pleasure of working at Whitgift since September 2020 and have been an IB teacher for the past three years, in both South Korea and the UK. What makes the IB special to me is the way in which it encourages students to build a balanced and thoughtful approach to their studies. Rather than students studying subjects as completely different and unconnected areas, students are constantly encouraged to make links and continuations between them. This is incredibly useful in a subject such as English where the context in which a literary work was produced is so significant. In our recent study of Voltaire’s Candide, for example, my class were able to draw on their philosophical and theological perspectives acquired through their Theory of Knowledge lessons, to grapple with some of the deeper philosophical questions posed by the text. Similarly, the focus on contemporary global issues that the IB promotes allows students to see the relevance of literary texts to their own daily lives and to the world around them. In studying The Vegetarian by Han Kang, we were able to explore many areas of South Korean society, such as the role of Confucianism and the importance of traditional forms of dress and cuisine. At the same time, the IB course encourages students to find links between other cultural contexts and their own and many of the themes of the novel, such as gender roles, social conformity, and the treatment of mental health issues clearly transcend the confines of a specific region, country or time.

The IB course also allows students to study an enormous range of literary texts, to an extent that most students do not encounter until university. Not only do students study all three of the main genres of literature – poetry, prose and drama – they are also able to study more experimental genres such as graphic novels and song lyrics and see how these can be analysed as literature as well. Students also study literature from a number of different centuries, with some reading texts from as early as the 10^th century or as current as the 21^st! This is a wider range than many undergraduates study and really demonstrates the commitment within the IB programme to broadening students’ understanding of literature and its history. Since September, my class have already studied texts from the 18^th, 19^th, 20^th and 21^st centuries, allowing them to observe how literary trends and ideas have changed and shifted over time. Students also study works from across the globe, allowing them to see how both social attitudes and literary forms vary across the world and further connecting them to a global group of learners. Most excitingly and unusually, the IB course not only assesses students’ knowledge of texts originally written in English, but also allows them to study works translated into English. This is hugely important in promoting a global and international viewpoint in our students and encourages them to engage with a wide range of texts and ideas, regardless of their own linguistic background.

For the last few months, IB teaching at Whitgift has moved online, but the quality of students’ education was maintained through a high-quality programme of online learning. IB students were able to carry out their usual high discussive lessons through Microsoft Teams, where a mix of whole class and small group learning was encouraged. Students were able to present to each other and listen to the teacher’s lessons, while presentation tools allowed us to annotate texts together and even write on a whiteboard, just as we would do in the classroom. I was incredibly impressed by the ease of online teaching and learning and the high-quality responses that it demonstrated, as evidenced by students’ extensive oral and written work.

In a year such as this, the importance of students’ motivation, flexibility and global outlook has been clearer and the IB English course allows students to develop these key skills and to become passionate, nuanced and independent thinkers.