Supervisors

Choosing a supervisor

Supervisors are adults other than your IB or CAS coordinators, relatives, or people under the age of 18. Even if your school friends are over 18, they cannot really vouch for you. Part of CAS requires that you seek out relationships with adults who you may or may not know very well. To this point, you cannot list relatives as supervisors. Therefore, I suggest you seek out a teacher who may be a strong match for this type of experience. If you do not like that idea, then ask a teacher with whom you have a close or trusting relationship to fulfill that same role. All you need to do is reach out to your favorite teachers, and they will mostly like accept the role. Just email a teacher or adult who you trust and who trusts you.

If you are doing work away from school, then you may choose to inform the supervisor every week or month. You may also document your work by taking screen shots of your website or fitness tracking or offering a link to your YouTube channel or upload pictures of your work. You make the call. Most students use the same types of adults as their supervisors:

• coach, sponsor, counselor, teacher, youth group leader, senior center leader, etc.

However, many students don't think about other adults who can serve as their supervisors for certain activities:

• Walking around your neighbor? Ask a trusted neighbor.

• Working out a local gym or workout facility? Make friends with staff members and ask one of them.

Your favorite teachers or neighbors can serve as a supervisor for multiple experiences if they are willing. Just be proactive and seek one out.

WHat is required of a supervisor?

Check out ManageBac's explanation.

We use ManageBac for all DP management, so supervisors may receive an email from a candidate requesting the approval of a certain experience. Supervisors will have to access ManageBac by clicking on the link provided in the email. They should then ensure that the student indeed worked toward the submitted hours and may choose to further review the reflections and evidence, depending on their interaction with the candidate and involvement in the experience. Ask to either see their evidence in person or in ManageBac. They should have some evidence of their work, e.g. sample poems, screen shots of their workouts, charts or graphs of their Robotics Club work, pictures of their games, etc. and 3-paragraph written reflections or oral reflections.

Supervisors can choose whether to be highly involved or only minimally, allowing the candidate to guide the way in any given experience. Some supervisors, like Girl Scout leaders, coaches, and sponsors of certain experiences, will be with students as they work, often times meeting with them on a weekly or a monthly basis. However, other supervisors, for instance like the manager of a gym where a student works out or a librarian who is working with a candidate for a CAS project, may only sign off on the number of hours that the candidate engaged in the experience at hand. At a bare minimum, the CAS supervisor must fill out the supervisor completion form on ManageBac, either by hand or digitally. Candidates have the choice of delivering a print-out of the Supervisor Review as a hard copy or a printed version, or they may simply click the button labeled "Request Supervisor Review" and a digital copy will arrive in your email inbox. Many supervisors offer a few subjective comments, but they all must click a box to confirm that a candidate completed or did not complete the hours listed.