We are delighted to welcome Oxford Study Courses to ISD as they run a week long intensive revision week for our IB DP year 2 students.
Normally, students around the world might travel to do a week at one of the OSC subject revision sites in Oxford, Boston, or Cambridge. Now, however, a number of International Schools and OSC are collaborating in order to offer bespoke courses to Grade 12 students in schools across different regions as they prepare for their final IB Diploma examinations in May.
ISD is the first school in Africa to host such a week and we hope it will be the start of an ongoing collaboration with Oxford Study Courses, ISD, and eventually other IB World Schools in the region. The team will arrive in Dakar this Sunday, March 18, and spend next week with ISD students, leaving on March 24.
Below is a short bio of each of the experienced educators coming to work with our students and collaborate with our faculty in in order to support the graduating class of 2018.
Christian Schmelz has 16 years experience teaching IB Diploma Biology, 13 years experience as a moderator for IB Biology IA / examiner for IB Biology exams, and 11 years experience teaching OSC spring revision and summer courses in Oxford, Cambridge and Boston. He is the author of online resources for IB Biology for pamoja and OSC, and he worked and lived in Germany, Ghana, the UK and Mozambique. He loves learning and helping others learn about Biology.
Roger Woodward has a BSc., M.A., ARCS read Chemistry at Imperial College of Science and Technology, UK, and gained a Masters in Science Education from Chelsea College, UK. He taught IB Chemistry, both HL and SL, at Sevenoaks School, UK from 1985, and has been teaching revision with OSC since 1999. He is the author of the OSC Chemistry Revision Guide for IB Chemistry Option A (Materials) and co-author of Chemistry for the IB Diploma (Cambridge University Press)
Ian Lucas has been teaching Maths for over 40 years, including IB since the early 1980s at Sevenoaks School, where he taught for 22 years. Although now retired from full-time teaching, Ian has been working with OSC since 1999, and was instrumental in starting up the Revision Guides. He began with the SL and Studies books in 2002, and the HL book followed. He’s been writing the Maths guides ever since, and is about to start on the new guides for the new syllabuses which being in 2019.
He notes, “Looking back on everything I have done in Maths, the revision course have been the most rewarding. Helping students to make sense of those things which they never quite got hold of, and tying everything together before the exam, has never failed to inspire confidence just when its needed. I look forward to the week in Dakar.”
Richard Tong: graduated with an Honours Degree in English Literature and then taught in the UK for 20 years in Further and Higher Education. He began teaching in international schools in 1994 and was Head of English in 5 schools up to retirement from full-time teaching in 2016. Richard’s teaching journey has taken him to Portugal, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Malaysia and Spain, where he now lives in a beautiful hilltop village. In recent years he has been a school inspector for the Council of International Schools. This post has enabled him to visit schools in Switzerland, Uruguay, Norway and Holland. Such voluntary work enables him to maintain a presence in the classroom and to observe excellent teaching practice. Richard is a teacher of IB Diploma English for Oxford Study Courses (OSC), who host students from all over the world, mainly in the beautiful city of Oxford. In addition, he has been a Senior Examiner for IB Diploma English Literature Higher Level and has recently begun supervising and evaluating trainee teachers for the Educators Abroad group. Richard confesses that he is addicted to travel. He is looking forward very much to teaching at ISD.
Peter Jackson taught history for over 40 years, IB History for over 30, and has been an IB examiner for 25 years. He has lived and worked in England, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Japan, Wales, Saudi Arabia, and Thailand in that order, visited over 100 countries. Peter is a motorcyclist and musician, and his interest in football is now limited to watching Premier League team Huddersfield Town.