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In my workbook, I defined meaningful integration as “the purposeful combination of experiences to develop the skills needed to produce the desired results.” With the overall desired results of education, in my mind at least, being the development of engaged global citizens that use their knowledge and skills to make the world a “better and more peaceful place” (IB mission statement).
With all this in mind, I think that meaningful integration of SL looks like: students actively engaged in units of study that are focused around large cross-cutting concepts, follow the 5 stages of SL, and thus allow the students to practice and improve upon the ATL, aka 21st-century, aka critical skills that will allow them to better understand and take action in the community.
As I write this out I feel like I’m a spokesperson for the IB. This feels very much like the regurgitation of their mission and philosophy, yet I work at an IB world-school and this is not the reality of what’s happening in the classroom (at least not across the board). I think that most teachers would agree that this is a beautiful mission and philosophy, and the ideal model of education, yet we seem to still have so far to go to make it actually happen. Here’s to all of us for doing our part to push things forward! .