Nicole Kidman and Life after PYP

[Photo Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/TN2Azd9iPaM]

The work we have been doing to "replace" the Primary Years Programme (PYP) with our own bespoke curriculum has been the weekly and daily stuff of my existence here recently. Now that we are coming to the end of it, we have realised (though in many ways we always knew) that our curriculum was very much our own anyway. It has reminded me of a long ago time when Nicole Kidman ruined my life, which I will explain.


Back in my halcyon days as a strong, rugby-playing nineteen year old, I was asked by my aunt in West Kerry, a beautifully rugged part of Ireland's western coastline, to erect a fence around a headland that juts out into the Atlantic. This fence had to conform to certain standards laid down by some grant-awarding agency or other (there seem to be so many for farmers). It was back-breaking work and would normally be done by two people, and using a tractor to put strain on the wire. I did it alone, armed only with a sixteen-pound hammer, straining the wire as I went along using a ratcheted wire strainer. By the time I was finished, about three weeks later, I had muscles in places where previously I didn't even have places.


Boy was I proud of this work! Visiting the area periodically during the following years, I would inspect it immediately and make necessary (and wholly unnecessary) repairs. This was a monument to me - I made this fence, hear me roar.


And then some time in the early nineties, disaster struck in the surprising form of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, who were, at that time, enjoying halcyon days of their own. Hollywood descended for a time upon this Irish-speaking area to make the movie "Far and Away" and a particular dream sequence required a wide aerial sweep of the breath-taking countryside. This being set in 1845, the presence of (expertly) fenced off headlands would have been all wrong. And so a team of advance scouts knocked on all farmers' doors, my aunt's included. They would pay her US$500 if she would permit them to remove my fence and replace it, exactly to standard, when filming was complete. It pains me to think of it: not only were they not sent packing at once, they were invited in and given tea. And cake. Cake!


What interests me now, looking back in a more objective frame of mind, is that the replacement fencing was completely indistinguishable from my own; my monument was put back for me precisely as I had erected it. The same stakes were used and were set the same distance apart, the single strand of barbed wire at the top precisely the same distance from the galvanised chicken wire at the base–because the grant inspectors required that they must. And so what should I have cared? Could I not consider this replica as I had considered the original? Proof that I could do the work of men? That I was no longer a child? That someone should buy me pints of Guinness?


I have been thinking a lot these days about the work we have been doing endlessly these past few months on replacing what was the PYP with something that, inevitably, looks very similar really to the PYP. I described a lot of this at my last forum. We certainly all feel very happy about the fact that it is so familiar, and excited actually. And we definitely find comfort in knowing that while we have moved away from that three-letter acronym, we are certainly remaining faithful to the notion of concept-based curriculum, to Inquiry as a major pedagogy and to allowing students to take their learning forward at times, in their own directions, under our guidance. But in other ways, there is a certain sadness too I think because, contrary to what some parents might have known, we also built our PYP curriculum ourselves. The PYP provides the framework and some educational guidelines, PYP schools write their own curricula based on those and to suit their contexts.


That what we will have instead is similar to the PYP is no great surprise. After all, we adopted it because we considered it a good marriage to what we already believed. The big benefit to the change is, of course, that as a College, we are moving towards a K-12 programme and we want to be the best foundation for that, on both campuses, as possible. I want to express our gratitude for the long association we have had with the PYP and with the IBO regional office here. We do hope we can remain associated to some degree in terms of collaboration from time to time.


The real sadness of course is that Nicole Kidman (and Tom Cruise for that matter) look far younger now than I do.


Have a restful weekend,


Brian