The Senior School curriculum helps students achieve their full potential. Every aspect of the high school experience, from the science lab to the playing courts, from cultural exchanges to community service, is viewed not only from the standpoint of academic preparation, but also from its contribution to the student’s developing sense of self. As students come to know the world, they come to know themselves. To this end Sophia Mundi offers the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme (DP) alongside a Vocational Pathway – the VCAL Career Related Certificate for students graduating from year 12 in 2013 onwards.
The Senior School student also needs teachers who have devoted themselves to and mastered particular subjects or skills: for example the logic in mathematics, the control of the hand and sharpening of eye in metal-work and wood-carving or the development of bodily grace, control and expression in eurythmy.
Students will gravitate towards particular people and areas of study according to their individual preferences and talents. At the same time each student should continue to accept the discipline each subject demands and also appreciate the insights and broader perspective that an IB interdisciplinary approach makes possible.
We believe the Diploma Programme is a natural continuation for Senior School which has been underpinned by a rigorous and creative Steiner pedagogy in Primary and Secondary Years, enabling the School to provide an education of international recognition.
The International Baccalaureate’s Diploma Programme is a challenging two-year pre-university course, which leads to a qualification that is widely recognised by the world’s leading universities. With its emphasis on providing a balanced and broad based curriculum with relevance to the youth of today, students learn to live in society rather than learning a collection of facts.
For students at SMSS the transition from a Steiner pedagogy to that of the IB is an easy transition given the depth and breadth of the Steiner curriculum up to year 10. This is made easier as all Senior School IB teachers teach in the secondary school Steiner courses.
In Class 11 the components of the big picture or the whole now become the focus in individual subjects. The perspective the students have at this age is “analysis” and students spend much of their time involved in activities such as: Appraising, Assessing, Classifying, Diagnosing, Ranking, Investigating… Students at this age and stage of their journey are much more self aware than in previous years. They even subject their own lives to quite rigorous analysis through the Extended Essay that the IB offers. This an engagement of will that feeds both thinking and feeling. This unit of work allows the students to stand back from themselves for the purpose of objectively reflecting upon their direction in life. At the completion of this the students may reflect that the Extended Essay has been a turning point for their life’s journey.
The students are also demanding of their teachers a new intellectual rigour that feeds their enquiring minds and gives them the thinking skills and the capacity to reflect upon and to evaluate actions critically.
The following are questions that you may hear from these young adults at this stage:
It is with these questions in mind that we teach the Theory of Knowledge in Classes 11 and 12.
Class 12 is a year of synthesis, where the students are able to look back over their schooling and then to order their thoughts into a higher thinking. A life QUESTION of ‘Where do I fit into this knowledge?’ and ‘What is my role in this world?’ underlies their approach to learning.
The following three points on understanding the human being at this age informs our Senior School teaching here at SMSS.
Such understanding resonates with the approach of the IB.