Student Comments

Comments of former Jordan IB students:

"I believe that the biggest impact was the projects and CAS hours that have helped me tremendously. It all started with the project MYP students had to complete as sophomores. We were allowed to choose any topic we wanted so long that is was approved by our mentor and well we learned something from it. My project was on the importance of getting to know your neighbors and participating in neighborhood clean-ups. From there is where the door opened to meet the Council member Rex Richardson. After the project is where we began to focus on the completion of CAS and well I believe I did almost 400 and something hours.

It was because of CAS that I wanted to get more involved with not only my community but my city. Therefore, I joined Youth Leadership Long Beach Class of 2016, I was a board member in charge of publicity for the League of Women Voters, and a couple of clubs at school such as IB club and MESA. I also had the opportunity to intern for the Councilman Richardson in 2016 for about 5 months. Given all that I was involved in and the reflection we had to complete for CAS at the end of our senior year, I realized how much I enjoy giving back to the community and being able to make a difference no matter how small. It is because of my experiences that I decided to return to Long Beach after I have received my degree and give back to my community in any way that I possibly can.

One thing I would advise to any IB student is to have fun while in the IB program, get involved and volunteer anytime you can because you never know what doors can open for you. Thanks to the IB program I am now interning for the summer again for Councilman Richardson and I love the work that I do."

--Adah Perez

Class of 2017

“The topics covered for each one of our courses were much more sophisticated than the regular topics that you would have in high school ... after I graduated and went to university, I found out some of the information that I was getting in the university, I already knew because of the IB programme.”

“I think the core value of IB is to create global citizens ... Another core value is to create critical thinkers. So I think those are the two main things, and to be a global citizen involves many, many things—there’s tolerance, understanding, vision, [being] innovative; it embodies lots of things, and the critical thinking is a fundamental part of it because the breadth of the programme and different styles of teaching and the different styles of assessment means you critically analyse everything, whether it’s art or history or science, whatever it is, you have to be a critical thinker, and not to take things on face value.”

“I remember reading Heart of Darkness. That dealt with ... the colonization and expansion of European culture and it coming into contact with other cultures, and then we read Things Fall Apart, an African novel that the other point of view, from the African point of view, and that’s one example, but it just seemed like we were always learning to think about things from the other point of view.”

“I went from sort of my failing grades in the regular high school programme to like, yeah, certainly straight As in the provincial thing and finished with a pretty good Diploma score and an extra certificate on top. So it was just like a night and day, sort of thing, in terms of the academic performance. It’s like oh, I can do this. I’d never been an A student ... So that was a very positive transition for me I think. “