At its Feb. 12 meeting, Oxford’s board of education talked about the district’s International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum, namely “what is IB and, more importantly, what is not IB.”

All students in the district receive an IB education from developmental kindergarten through 10th grade. After that, students can elect to pursue an IB diploma in their junior and senior years of high school. IB is best known for its toughness as well as its focus on teaching students to think of things in local and global contexts.

To break down the district’s efforts throughout the last nine years for the board trustees, IB coordinators Christine Vince, Rita Flynn and Stephanie Niemi gave a 40-minute presentation. The three ladies primarily focused on the district’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) initiatives at the five elementary schools.

Throughout the PYP years, students are introduced to Programmes of Inquiry (POI). These POIs become the units students learn from. For instance, a POI Oxford first-graders learn is to find patterns that can lead to predictions. As they learn that POI, the district’s goal is that 90 percent of students’ course curriculum in every class will somehow come back to patterns and predictions.

With all of the critical thinking that comes with PYP, the district hopes students will make connections from the classroom to their everyday lives and start taking action to improve their community.

“It’s a program that tries to help students make connections when they’re learning to see themselves as independent learners who have become empowered to contribute to the world in a positive way,” Vince said.

According to Niemi, that action is already being taken. She highlighted a group of girls at her school, Clear Lake Elementary, who did a water bottle drive for Oxford-Orion FISH and a young man who is collecting soda pop caps from the playground to turn into art.

“Action is happening,” Niemi said. “It’s happening with developmental kindergarten kids, who are leaning that if I see you, I smile at you and I say hi, that makes people feel good. In upper level grades, they’re starting to really come up with different things that they care about and are approaching (school) board members.”

The board trustees met the presentation with approval, many noting the benefits for all students they believe comes with the IB program, even though a fraction of the students go on to receive the diploma.

“IB isn’t just a diploma,” Board Vice President Dan D’Alessandro said.

Others went on to commend the action-taking and value-holding students appear to be developing because of the program.

“I’m proud to be a part of a district where we’re actually teaching these young kids these values that will last,” Trustee Mary Hanser said.

“I just commend our district for saying, ‘We’re willing to put in the work.’ We’re willing to put in the work because we believe if we get these kids, ask them the right questions, lightbulbs will go on and they’ll see the connections,” Board President Tom Donnelly said.”And when they see the connections there’s going to be care and action because something has got to get done.”

The board of education will meet again on Feb. 26 at Oxford High School. Meetings start at 6:30 p.m.