Why IB at GRS?

Why IB at a Montessori High School?

Our goal at Great River School, a Montessori IB school, is to help you develop into thoughtful internationally minded adults who recognize your common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet to help create a better and more peaceful world. The IB organization shares this goal as well, and this is why we see IB as an opportunity full of exciting potential for GRS.

The International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum’s primary goal transcends transmitting and learning information.  Both IB and Montessori value educating the whole person and focusing on how we can create a more peaceful world, which is an integral step in helping adolescents find their place in the universe in the Montessori Cosmic sense.  Students’ experience in an IB program does not focus on a mere collection of facts.  The IB Diploma Program prepares students for university and encourages them to:

  • ask challenging questions
  • learn how to learn
  • develop a strong sense of their own identity and culture
  • develop the ability to communicate with and understand people from other countries and cultures

Students’ IB Creativity Action and Service (CAS) work allows them to nurture opportunities for self-expression including artistic and imaginative activities.

The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world.

“The IBO is unapologetically idealistic in believing that education can foster understanding among young people around the world, enabling future generations to live more peacefully and productively… By emphasizing the dynamic combination of knowledge, skills, independent critical thought and international awareness or intercultural understanding, the IBO espouses the principles of educating the whole person for a life of active, responsible citizenship.
Developing the capacity for critical examination of oneself and one’s traditions, for living ‘the examined life’ that Socrates described, is the starting point from which all else follows. Examining critically our own and others’ customs and traditions is a necessary element for an education that enables us to discern what is of value and what ought to be cherished and retained.
Learning experiences for students in the Diploma Program are designed to relate to the realities of the outside world. Much emphasis is placed on the goal of international understanding and a consciousness of common concerns as a basis for a more peaceful, sustainable future for all. The challenge is to foster development of citizenship at multiple levels – in the immediate community, at a wider national level and beyond, in an international sense – while at the same time encouraging the development in students of a sense of their own identity.” Source: A Continuum of Education, IBO, 2002.

For more specific information about how International Baccalaureate and Montessori compliment each other check out this IB Great River School comparison chart or read this information about the overlap between GRS and IB.