Smart, confident Jackson Main students in IB program

Rows of three-sided displays standing on long tables in the auditorium of Jackson Main Elementary School gave colorful expression to the scholastic achievements of the 2022–23 sixth grade class. 

Jackson Main is an International Baccalaureate World School. It follows a curriculum of integrating academic subjects into a series of Units of Learning. The units focus variously on the eight values of the IB program: form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective, responsibility, and reflection. 

The school follows the IB Primary Years Program, for youngsters up to middle school. The IB PYP Exhibition Day was the sixth graders’ final presentation for the school year. 

“I think my students learned a lot about the topics they did,” said sixth grade teacher Joseph Germinaro. “They learned about the ozone layer, but also about social education, what’s going on in the world, and how they, more than us, can make the world better.”

Germinaro gestured at a row of projects accomplished by teams in his class. 

The president of the student body of Jackson Main, Rayven Gayle, was on one of Germinaro’s teams. She plans events with the student council and is on a team of student ambassadors who want to change the name of Jackson Main to Carmen Fariña Main, in honor of the current New York City Schools Chancellor. 

“My team picked ozone layer depletion and recovery,” Gayle said, “because we want people to know the importance of it in our atmosphere, because without it we would burn, and nothing on the planet would survive. So far we learned about the chemicals that hurt the ozone layer, and we picked the action plan on how to spread awareness.”

The students took on different tasks to complete the exhibit. Gayle typed out the definition of the ozone layer and the action plan. Ana Constante and Aracely Vilocio articulated why the ozone layer was depleting. Alison Perez Bustillo took on ozone pollution, and Alison Perez Rodriguez explained what is happening with the ozone layer today.

The students used pie charts, bar charts, maps, drawings, labels, and three-dimensional models, arranged in a logical collage, to present the multiple aspects of their topic. 

“We call this Exhibition Week because they are showing their accumulated inquiries, knowledge, and global mindset,” said IB PYP Coach Soh Young Lee-Segredo. “In Jackson Main, throughout the year, we have them do periodic exhibitions and showcase them in our main entrance.”

“They get so many opportunities to present,” said Jackson Main Vice Principal Rozella Fibleuil. “The kids themselves create these exhibits, obviously with adult guidance, but there’s no stopping them. They’ve also put together their sixth-grade graduation program. They selected the student speakers themselves.”

Outside, the large blacktopped courtyard was ringed with colorful displays made by a class with a different sort of graduation project. 

Under the guidance of special ed teacher Lori Roman and speech pathologist Janni Silber, the self-contained special education sixth grade class developed 11 educational games for primary school children. 

“They made educational games based on skills that they actually need to work on, but they made carnival games for the first and second grade,” Silber said “They had a choice of what they wanted to do. They had to figure out how much money we would budget for prizes, which pieces of equipment were reusable, and so on. They worked on interaction with each other, on phonological awareness skills, on math. They really went the extra mile with it. It was very student-driven.”

A lightweight soccer ball soared into a goal. Graduating sixth-grader Anthony Bonilla coached two first-graders who were aiming golf balls into variously scored goals. A variant of Twister where players matched the shapes that the game’s creator called out had youngsters laughing. A subtracting dice game, a race car game using matchbox vehicles, and too many other games to describe here, drew interested youngsters into tight circles around the displays. 

“The responsibility and the ownership of what they created,” said Silber, “that’s what made me so proud of them.”