MPUSD’s Monterey-area schools prepare to become International Baccalaureate schools.

In the Monterey High School’s busy quad, Sanette van der Merwe giggles with a student teaching her how to fold a square piece of paper into a lantern. “This is harder than it looks,” she says. “I’ll have to teach my students, when I’m home.”

Home is Pretoria, South Africa. Van der Merwe is one of the 15 educators who visited Monterey High on Oct. 19, which coincided with the school’s Indian Diwali festival. The exchange isn’t just a treat for the campus, but also a part of Monterey High and Colton Middle schools’ move to becoming International Baccalaureate schools.

IB was originally developed in Switzerland in 1968 for mobile families of diplomats who wanted their children to have an education that would be internationally recognized by universities. It’s centered around inquiry-based learning, which helps students develop their own questions – helping cultivate “curiosity, problem-solving and empathy,” according to Monterey High IB Coordinator Gabriela Deambrosio.

Monterey High and Colton Middle expect to be authorized as IB schools by the fall 2018 and 2019, staggering different programs.

“[It’s] a massive undertaking,” Monterey High principal Tom Newton says. “We can’t just buy equipment or adopt a curriculum and become an IB school.”

The first-year program costs – including fees to IB, teacher training, and subs to cover teachers when they were attending training – total about $130,000.

For a diploma program at Monterey High, 11th – and 12th-graders will add longer two-year courses like the Theory of Knowledge, and will be able to earn some college credit. Meanwhile, sixth – through 10th-graders will focus on end-of-year projects.

If all goes according to plan, Monterey High and Colton Middle will join the International School of Monterey as the only three IB schools in Monterey County, among some 1,700 in the nation.