IB Conference Relfection

For this activity I was instructed to talk to Sophomores and their parents about the IB program. My goals going into this activity were to help to inform the students about the IB program, I really wanted to encourage them to try the program. However I was realistic and told them that it would be very difficult and a lot of hard work. It felt really good to answer the parents and students questions. I was happy to share my experience for the benefit of others. I was very careful to what I said because I didn't want my personal experience to overly influence them however. I thought that if i joked around to much about how hard it was I would be giving the wrong impression and could make the student make the wrong decision, which would be unethical. Also by promoting the IB i was promoting a program that dealt with global issues. I wanted to help stress how the IB is a global program and forces its students to look at issues with a larger perspective that just the one that their own culture has placed on them. This has been very personally influential to me and I wanted to share its importance to others, which I felt that I did accomplish. I felt that the goals were perfect for this activity. I did not have any difficulties since I am personally very comfortable talking in front of a large group of people. The only difficulties I had was with the parents meeting, in trying to find a way to be honest about the stress and the work load with out stressing out the parents. There was this one mother in particular that kept saying her daughter had a bed time and she didnt want her up to late, or how could she access her daughters due dates. She was frustrating me because she was making it hard to stress the important of the students role in time management, and how that makes you grow, since she was trying to take control of that daughters role in her education. One thing that I learned from this activity is how to talk to a large group in a professional matter to express what I want to express.