When students return to school the first week, there’ll be a new face in the office. Over the summer, Robinson hired Derek Thomas to become the IB coordinator for the upcoming school year, a position he’s extremely excited to take on.
“When my youngest son graduated from Plant two years ago, I started keeping an eye out for open positions that I felt would be an interesting and engaging move for me,” Thomas said. “When this position came along, it felt like the perfect fit at the perfect school.”
Although he may be coming from Plant, a school without an IB program, Thomas is anything but inexperienced, having worked in tandem with IB programs before as well as having led other programs in the past, gaining valuable experience. This past experience as a coordinator will likely come in handy as Thomas takes on the role as the head of Robinson IB, a position that comes with a multitude of challenges and responsibilities. One of the most prominent challenges Thomas will face is adequately supporting students as well as teachers.
“At various points in my career, I’ve supported both students and teachers,” Thomas said. “I think I can bring those skills together to be able to make strong relationships with both at the same time.”
Aside from equally supporting students and teachers, Thomas looks to extend his past experience to help improve students’ writing abilities.
“I’d love to work on bringing up our students’ Extended Essay scores,” Thomas said. “As a Capstone Seminar teacher in the past, I have a lot of ideas that I think could help give students more skills to be more successful in writing this type of essay.”
With the school year about to start, Thomas offers some advice to rising juniors about to start the IB program.
“Work hard on your academics but also enjoy the Robinson experience. There are so many things to get involved in and enjoy here,” Thomas said. “When you look back on your time at Robinson IB, you will remember the people, the relationship and the experiences far more than you remember your academic work.”
Although we might not all be excited to start the school year, the Robinson IB program is definitely excited to welcome its new coordinator on Monday.