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Rotterdam International Secondary School has been on a journey from accreditation to implementing the innovative and exciting educational pathway – the IB Careers-Related Programme (CP). The school’s goal in offering the IB CP has been to provide our students with more choices intended to promote student agency. They welcomed their first cohort of 11 students into the programme in September 2022.
-By Clint Marshall, IB CP Coordinator / Curriculum Leader for Sports Science & Extracurricular Activities at Rotterdam International Secondary School
Targeted effort has been put into building bridges between the various elements of the CP, and significant interconnectedness and crosslinks have been developed between the topics of Ethics and Team Building.
Ethical awareness
An interdisciplinary approach to integrating ethics has seen students participate in various learning activities. Activities intended to challenge their current understanding of ethics while promoting the development of their ethical awareness and decision-making skills. Students undertook a unit on applied ethics as part of Personal and Professional Skills (PPS). They learnt about the fundamentals of ethics and the various concepts and approaches, such as business ethics, applied ethics and consequentialism.
The unit was intentionally planned early in the programme and concluded with a deep dive into ethical dilemmas, setting students up early with the knowledge and understanding before they moved on to their Reflective Projects. The unit included debates and class discussions on case studies and current ethical dilemmas. A strong emphasis was made on linking this learning with Business: the focus of their Career-Related Study .
Team Building
Another unit that played an invaluable role in our interconnected CP curriculum was team building. The topic was initially undertaken as part of the BTEC Business Diploma, but we quickly forged links between PPS (Effective Communication unit) and Service Learning.
“The unit itself helps students prepare for the real world. Throughout our lives, we will be challenged to work with numerous different people whom we might not be compatible with.” (RISS Student).
During BTEC lessons, students took a deep dive into the theory and concepts behind team building and its impacts on both individuals and businesses. The unit concluded with a day filled with challenging activities designed to promote teamwork, cooperation and, of course, loads of fun and mud! (see picture).
