This week, I saw some news from Lincoln School that made me smile.
Lincoln officially announced its authorization to offer the IB Career-related Programme (IBCP), completing the continuum of IB programs available to students at the school. The authorization itself actually came through shortly before I left Lincoln at the end of last school year, but sometimes these things take a little while to make their way into a social media post.
Seeing the announcement brought me back to those final weeks at Lincoln and to something that I remain incredibly proud of.
Over the past several years, there was a steady and intentional evolution in the way we thought about learning at Lincoln. It didn’t happen all at once, and it certainly wasn’t the work of any one person. Instead, it developed through years of conversations, experimentation, planning, and a shared willingness to ask a pretty simple question: How can we create more meaningful opportunities for all of our students?
The development of the IBCP became an important part of the answer. Like most meaningful accomplishments in schools, the authorization wasn’t really defined by the two-day visit or the email telling us we had been successful. It was defined by all of the work that came before it. There were countless meetings, drafts, revisions, curriculum conversations, professional learning sessions, and, I’m fairly certain, enough spreadsheets to last everyone involved for quite some time.
From the beginning, it was a team effort. I especially want to recognize Michelle Lampinen and Ana Elena Acon, who provided leadership at different stages of the process. Michelle served as the High School Assistant Principal and took on the additional responsibilities as our IBCP Coordinator during the first year of the journey and helped us take an idea and begin turning it into an actual program. She helped establish the foundation, asked important questions, and brought clarity and purpose to those early stages of development. Ana Elena took over as IBCP Coordinator during the second year and led us through the final stages of the process, including overseeing our virtual authorization visit. Her attention to detail, organization, and steady presence were instrumental in getting us across the finish line. And I also have to mention Rachel Harmon who at first served as our MYP Coordinator and for the last several months of the process as High School Assistant Principal. Without her mentorship to Ana Elena and consistent support to me and rest of the team we never would have gotten across the finish line.
At the same time, this accomplishment belongs to the entire High School faculty and staff. Developing the IBCP required collaboration across departments, alignment between programs, curriculum development, professional learning, and a willingness to think differently about how we could serve students. I watched teachers invest tremendous time and energy into that work, often while managing all of the other things teachers somehow manage to do every day.
And ultimately, that was the point. This was never about adding another acronym to Lincoln’s already impressive collection of them. It was about students.
Now I’m a few thousand miles away, beginning a new chapter at BCIS, and I get to see the work continue from a different perspective. I think there is something pretty special about that. Leadership in schools is temporary. Eventually, all of us move on and someone else occupies our classroom, office, or role. The hope is that the things we cared about don’t leave with us. Good ideas become shared ideas. Programs continue to evolve. New people bring new thinking and make them better. The work carries on.
So, seeing Lincoln share the news publicly gave me another opportunity to celebrate something I was fortunate enough to be part of and, more importantly, the people who made it happen.
Congratulations to Michelle, Ana Elena, Rachel, the High School faculty and staff, and the entire Lincoln community. I know how much work went into this, and I’m incredibly proud of what we accomplished together.
The authorization may be official, and now finally LinkedIn official, but the real measure of its success will be what comes next: students discovering new interests, pursuing different pathways, challenging themselves, and finding opportunities that might not otherwise have existed.
That’s what we were working toward all along, and I can’t wait to see where they take it next.
Garrenteed Learning 