The International Baccalaureate is a global community of schools with a shared mission to empower young people with the values, knowledge, and skills to create a more peaceful world. The primary goal is to develop internationally-minded individuals who recognize the global values of humanity and the responsibility their actions have on the planet.
As an IB World School, Beacon adopts the Primary Years Programme (PYP) for Early Childhood and Elementary School, the Middle Years Programme (MYP) in Middle School and offers the Diploma Programme (DP) for High School students. These programs are aligned with our school's values and mission.
Program evaluations can be internal or external and the school is reviewed and audited by the IB, resulting in a high international quality standard that is constantly maintained.
Research is the guiding pedagogical approach of the IB programs. It is through inquiry that students explore, question, experiment, reflect, research, and apply their knowledge and conceptual understanding of the world to solve problems. This inquiry-based approach nurtures curiosity, promotes enthusiasm for lifelong learning, and enables meaningful, contextualized understanding of the world.
Our students are at the center of the inquiry. Because they are agents of their own learning, they have a voice, choice, and mastery of their journey. They use their own initiative and interest, take responsibility, and direct their learning with a strong sense of identity and self-confidence. Together with teachers and peers, students build relationships of trust and partnership, thus collaboratively forming new and deeper understandings.
As students investigate their interests and curiosities, they are constantly encouraged to question, reflect, and act. Our goal is that our students feel confident and empowered to apply their knowledge in practical and innovative ways, consequently incorporating these important values into their lives and becoming active members of their communities inside and outside of school.
The goal of all IB programs is to develop internationally-minded individuals. In this sense, we work so that our students recognize themselves as responsible agents capable of contributing to positive changes toward a more peaceful and sustainable world for all.
Furthermore, we nurture respect and appreciation for diversity as an opportunity for growth and learning. We encourage reflection on different perspectives, cultures, and identities.
Finally, multilingualism is a key element in developing internationally-minded students. The ability to communicate in different languages contributes to understanding, connecting, and relating to different cultures, peoples, and realities. Thus, students feel more prepared and confident to engage more responsibly and actively in local and global situations and issues.
Because Beacon values the Student Agency, meaningful learning experiences are provided for students to develop the attributes of the student profile. As IB students, they are encouraged to be questioners, knowledgeable, thinkers, communicators, principled, open-minded, supportive, courageous, balanced, and reflective people. These attributes will help individuals and groups to have international mindsets and to act for positive change in the world.
In addition, students have opportunities to develop interrelated skills that will enable them to become students who can lead and take responsibility for their learning. The development of thinking, research, communication, social, and self-management skills are crucial to forming active, compassionate, and lifelong learners.
PYP, the IB's program for children ages 3 years to 12 years, takes a concept-driven, transdisciplinary teaching and learning approach. The program aims to transcend the traditional boundaries between different areas of knowledge, enabling the perception and creation of true meanings about the world. Through enhanced critical thinking, students will be able to apply and share their knowledge and understanding with peers, faculty, and the community.
Our program encompasses Units of Inquiry that provide students with transdisciplinary opportunities to develop all the necessary attributes, skills, knowledge, and conceptual understanding of the transdisciplinary PYP themes below:
MYP aims to develop active learners and internationally minded young people who can empathize with others, and have important and relevant purpose and meaning for their lives and community.
The program empowers students to investigate a wide range of issues and ideas of local, national, and global importance. The result is the formation of creative, critical, and reflective young thinkers. In addition, it seeks to help students develop their personal understanding, sense of self, and responsibility toward their community and the world.
Using global contexts, MYP students develop an understanding of their common humanity and the importance of participating in a peaceful society, creating a collective feeling about the planet, through the exploration of the following contexts:
The Diploma Programme is a balanced curriculum across a wide range of subject areas, allowing students to develop intellectually, personally, and emotionally.
The curriculum consists of six knowledge areas and the "DP Core" ("Theory of Knowledge", "Creativity, Activity and Service", "Extended Essay").
The DP Core is mandatory for all students and provides the student with critical thinking about the nature of knowledge, how to write an individual research paper, and how to lead a project involving service to the community.
The courses studied are inserted in six areas of knowledge:
1. “Studies in Language and Literature”.
2. Language Acquisition.
3. Individuals and Societies.
4. Sciences.
5. Mathematics.
6. Arts.
Beacon offers several choices of courses within each subject area. Students may choose to take three courses at the Standard level and three at the Higher level. It is necessary to choose one subject per group (except for Group 6). These choices make the student's curriculum very diverse and individualized.
Who We Are
We study human beings, their beliefs and values, rights and responsibilities, and the interactions and different cultures of the families, communities, and groups we are part of and live with.
Where We Are in Place and Time
We study the context in which we live, in terms of both time and space; personal narratives and the histories of societies across different periods; the geographical space as perceived and modified over time.
How We Express Ourselves
We reflect on the ways of expressing ideas, feelings, beliefs, and values; we experiment with different means to appreciate and express our creativity and understanding of the world.
How the World Works
We investigate the nature and the relationship between humans and their environment; how humans understand how the world works, create scientific and technological artifacts, and their impacts on society and the environment.
How We Organize Ourselves
We study the functioning of groups and societies created by humans, the structures and functions of organizations, the choices made by individuals and societies, and the repercussions on everyone's lives.
How We Share the Planet
We reflect on the rights and responsibilities regarding the preservation, use, and sharing of scarce resources in the environment in which we live and in which we build coexistence with different groups and communities.
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