Curriculum Coordinator's Welcome
Dr. Peter DuckettDear Bayan School Community Members,
Welcome to the 2022-2023 academic year. I am excited to begin the year and we all look forward to
seeing you on campus again. I’d like to take this opportunity to outline some of the major curricular
initiatives that the school will be working on this year.
UDL, AEA, MSA, BQA
This year the school is poised to engage in strategic actions guided by a variety of mechanisms including
Middle States Accreditation (MSA), the Bahrain Quality Assurance, and existing Bahrain Bayan School
policies and procedures. Within the MSA protocols the school has identified three student performance
objectives; Arabic Literacy, English Literacy, and Mathematics. Within these objectives there is an
intention to embed Additional Educational Assistance (AEA). In support of these objectives we will
continue to explore applications of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in unit and lesson planning so
that they more strongly encompass students’ interests, strengths, and needs. This initiative brings
inclusive changes that will seek students’ opinions, offer them choices, and make learning feel even
more relevant. It will also increase access to assistive technologies such as text-to-speech, speech-to-
text, audiobooks, or other adjusted formatting. Additionally, it should offer students options for showing
what they know through a variety of formats, such as poster presentations, video recordings, graphic
organizers, product designs, or other real world applications.
VERTICAL ALIGNMENT
This year the Curriculum Committee, comprised of subject leaders from the four sections of the school,
will be engaged not only in exploring applications of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) but also a
continue the systematic and intentional review of the vertical alignment of curriculum from
kindergarten through grade 12. The school’s curriculum planning software, ATLAS, allows each subject
team to examine the mapped curriculum for redundancies, gaps, and consistency.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
The school will continue its longstanding tradition of supporting the professional growth of teachers in
enhancing their instructional practice. For the past several years, Erma Anderson, has provided teachers
in the Math program with training focusing on developing students’ conceptual understanding of
mathematics. Toward the end of last year, the school engaged in an audit of the Arabic and English
programs with Erin Kent Consulting and, across the coming years, we will host consultants on campus
and online with an aim to enhance Arabic and English literacy K-12.
The school maintains and actively accesses additional resources for professional learning through
memberships with internationally renowned organizations such as Near East South Asia Council of
Overseas Schools, The Principals’ Training Center and regularly accesses relevant workshops through
organizations such as Chapters International. Teachers who deliver IB courses in Grades 11 and 12
regularly attend IB trainings made available through the International Baccalaureate Organization.
Dr. Peter Duckett
Coordinator of Curriculum and Professional Learning