Taft HS adding engineering, teacher education to its IB career pathway program

by BRIAN NADIG

Taft High School is adding engineering and teacher education to the course list for its International Baccalaureate Career-related Pathway Program, allowing students to earn professional certifications and college credit.

“I think it’s one of the exciting things we can do here at Taft.,” principal Dr. Ryan Glowacz said at the March 11 meeting of the Taft Local School Council.

Currently 13 percent of all juniors and 12 percent of all seniors are in the IB career program. Taft has about 4,250 students.

The existing career-related classes offered at Taft are web design, journalism, strength and conditioning, entrepreneurship, digital media, U.S. Naval Junior ROTC, theater production, performance drama, and Chicago police and fire training.

“The ceiling on potential growth of the program is very high,” Glowacz said.

The 10-year-old program allows students to receive some of the benefits of Taft’s IB diploma program, while having more flexibility in choosing classes in their junior and senior years. “You have more room in your schedule for electives,” Glowacz said.

Career program participants are required to take only two IB diploma courses, one of which must be language and literature compared to full-time IB diploma students who have many more mandated courses. Students can earn college credit if they do well on an exam administered at the end of a diploma course.

In a related matter, the ROTC program recently purchased military-grade drones and is exploring a partnership with United Airlines to support curricular integration of flight simulators.

“Through coordination with IBCP, this is a program that can take off,” Glowacz told the LSC.

Taft also is planning to launch a required two-to-three week unit for all seventh through 10th graders which will require the transfer of “learning across all disciplines  through a lens of intercultural understanding and global engagement,” Glowacz wrote in his monthly principal’s report to the LSC.

“You’ll have to transfer knowledge from one course to another to be successful,” he said at the meeting.

The interdisciplinary units will include the following courses: individuals and societies, language and literature, math and science. The units are part the school’s IB Middle Years Program, and the topics will be vary by grade and be “wildly diverse,” Glowacz said.

Taft is considered an “IB World School,” whose mission is to educate “global citizens” and “create a better world.” IB standards are supposed to be carried out throughout the school’s curriculum.

The IB curriculum initially was created for the children of diplomats so that a similar educational standard could be followed as the diplomats and their families move around the world.

Taft administrators have said that the rigors of an IB curriculum, in particular the diploma courses, are recognized by colleges and universities and can help Taft graduates get into to the school of their choice.

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