Two different curriculums, one lesson.
This is the reality of new AP and IB Biology teacher Sonia Charbonneau. Charbonneau started this year with a new challenge: teaching both the AP and IB Biology curriculums in one class.
“[Teaching biology] is an interesting prospect and one that I hope that I will do very well with,” Charbonneau said.
Historically AP and IB Biology have been separated due to different curricula and preparatory material. This year, the biology classes have now been combined to accommodate both AP and IB Biology students.
This new combination of two different curriculums surprised Charbonneau; in the past, she had only had experience with AP science-oriented classes.
“This is my first time [teaching] IB classes,” Charbonneau said. “In fact, I don’t think any of the schools where I taught previously were IB schools.”
Even though Charbonneau was new to IB curricula, she said she was open to new teaching experiences.
“I was super excited to teach AP and happy to teach IB,” Charbonneau said. “I mean, they’re both advanced, introductory college-level biology classes, right? IB likes to talk about the process; they like to talk about the journey into science, not just the facts, which AP generally does. IB [also] likes to add in some of the historical elements and how things evolved as we learn more about science, but I do that anyway because I think that makes it more interesting.”
While Charbonneau was presented with the challenge of making this class beneficial for both AP and IB Biology students, she was determined to help all of her students succeed.
“You want both groups to get everything they need and to be successful when they go into the AP exam or the IB exam,” Charbonneau said. “[Curriculum planning] requires some different thinking and creativity, so I may eliminate certain curricula, but then I have some IB students who want to take the AP exam too, so I don’t necessarily want to eliminate content for them that they would need to be successful on the AP exam.”
Charbonneau isn’t the only person to have concerns about how the integration of new curricula will affect student learning. Senior Sydney Martinez, an IB Biology student, is concerned about preparing for the IB exam.
“The exams are very different from AP, because in AP it’s more multiple-choice than free response, but in IB a small portion of the exam is multiple-choice, like you get 30 multiple choice questions and the free response is worth way more on the IB exam than the AP exam,” Martinez said. “IB [also] covers extra [units] like botany and anatomy, and we haven’t gotten over those. I feel like I need to study way more on my own time to prepare for the IB exam.”
In addition to different preparations concerning the IB and AP tests, IB students have additional work assigned outside of class to cover IB units not covered in class, further distinguishing the workload from that of AP students.
“As an IB student, there’s a lot more work than there needs to be in comparison to the average AP student,” Martinez said.
Senior Feifan Liu, an AP student, feels differently about the integration of IB with AP classes.
“I’m not too familiar with the IB curriculum and how it’s different, but I would say it doesn’t matter if they’re taught in the same classroom because most of the [material] that’s being covered is the same,” Liu said. “Since there’s not that many kids taking IB Bio, it’s probably useful for them to be able to interact with kids taking AP Bio. I would assume IB is harder simply because there’s more [units] covered in the curriculum.”
As Biology [curricula] evolves, Charbonneau has had to redesign her teaching plans for students.
“There was a time when AP and IB overlapped well,” Charbonneau said. “[AP] covered body systems and plants and the two [courses] were very similar, but now they’ve removed those elements and they’ve replaced them with gene expression and gene regulation. They’ve still maintained the body systems and the botany sections, so the classes can either be taught separately, or you can kind of interweave some of the topics from IB into the sections of AP.”
Despite the new classroom style, Charbonneau aims to use the material she teaches in class to prepare all her students, both IB and AP, for a future in biology.
“These kids need to have the confidence to work with different laboratory materials so that when they go to college and someone tells them to go get a beaker, or a test tube rack or a petri dish, they know how to use them [and] they feel confident and comfortable,” Charbonneau said. “That’s preparing kids [for the future]. I hope that eventually, they will be separate classes so that I can give my absolute best to [the AP and IB students].”
McKenzie Le • Oct 16, 2024 at 10:54 pm
I love this story, Aash!! Writing is phenomenal!!!