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An Inspiring Conversation with Andrew Magness & Sara Ross at Valley High School
October 23rd, 2026
One of the mind-boggling things about being involved in the IB is realizing that thousands of educators around the world are thinking about the same question…
How can we best bring this thoughtful, interconnected curriculum to life for our students?
At its heart, the IB believes that students should leave school with a commitment to inclusion, international-mindedness, peace, and with an understanding that, even when we see things differently, other people can also be right.
When Sara first reached out to Sofía and me in early September about collaborating on ways to integrate Theory of Knowledge into the broader IB curriculum, I could never have anticipated the connection we would find during that hour on Zoom. Andrew, Sara, Sofía, and I laughed and shared a deep belief in education’s power to change young people’s lives.
Andrew and Sara are doing this work at Valley High School in Las Vegas, Nevada.
First, some context…
Valley is a public high school serving a general student population, with three magnet programs, the IB Middle Years and Diploma Programmes, the Academy of Hotel and Tourism, and Military Science, Technology and Emergency Management.
Valley’s IB Programme began in 1979, making it the oldest IB school west of the Mississippi River. The school serves 2,200 students, including 180 to 220 IB students each year. It is a Title I, Tier 1 school in Clark County School District (CCSD), the fifth-largest school district in the United States. Both the district and the school serve majority-minority communities.
Andrew and Sara are National Board-Certified Teachers in Social Studies/History for Adolescence and Young Adulthood. They also coordinate and teach several classes each day, which they value because it keeps them connected to the students in their programmes. Andrew is the Diploma Programme and Extended Essay Coordinator and teaches DP History of the Americas and Theory of Knowledge. Sara is the Middle Years Programme and Personal Project Coordinator. She teaches MYP Humanities, DP Global Politics, and Approaches to Learning, as well as Honors U.S. History outside the IB programme.
I told you they are inspiring.
Their commitment extends beyond Valley. Andrew and Sara are working with colleagues across Clark County School District to strengthen the district’s IB Programmes by sharing resources, ideas, and approaches.
Sofía and I came away deeply impacted by their work, and I’m glad to share their story with you.
What vision guides your work at Valley, and how do you work together to promote, strengthen, and make the transition between programmes feel coherent for students and teachers?
Andrew: In my twenty years at Valley High School, the vision that guides my work has changed. I no longer log on every July 5th to check our diploma rates and compare them to the world averages. I know that the IB community we have built is enough to send these IB humans into the world with the tools they need to succeed. Our students leave with lifelong skills, not lifelong memorization of facts. They learn that working hard in IB can open the doors of colleges and universities that change the generational wealth of their families, and many of them are the first in their families to graduate, from families who work hard to give them that freedom.
As a professional, I believe that staying at one school is how you can fundamentally change a community. You do not change it by bouncing around because you dislike the area or your principal. You change it by teaching a whole family’s children in the same neighborhood, so that they come back and give back to this small corner of the world for the next kids who grow up off Sahara and Eastern.
That same vision shapes how we make the transition between programmes feel coherent. Each year, our IB retreat brings both programmes together so that students and teachers experience them as one community. IB murals throughout our hallways connect each year’s journey, so students can see where they have been and where they are headed. Our vertical PLC (Professional Learning Community) ensures that all staff understand the language and the growth needed at every level of IB.
Finally, I am fortunate to have found an IB soulmate in Sara, our MYP coordinator, whose partnership keeps the two programmes working as one. Together, these practices mean that when students arrive in the DP, it feels like the next step in a community they already belong to.
Sara: I am such a fan of the type of kind, critically engaged humans that IB develops and the way our Valley IB community builds up students for whatever college success looks like to them. Andrew likens our students to LeBron James and us to agent Rich Paul–we want to connect our students to the best possible opportunities and ensure they have the skills, the confidence, and the humility (in terms of knowing when and how to seek support) to thrive there. We are proud to have alumni all over on full ride scholarships through specific universities and through the Questbridge National College Match Scholarship. We share the stories of our past students and excitedly mention possibilities for our current ones–in the hopes that they envision a future beyond what they once thought was possible.
Andrew and I both love the city of Las Vegas, but we encourage students to experience life beyond southern Nevada. Through intentionally getting to know students over their four years with us, and through reading their CE/CAS reflections, participating in academic lessons and our social events, we develop relationships with students so that they know we are a resource, and we as educators are familiar with their goals. (Securing a consistent IB guidance/academic counselor has helped immensely with this as well.)
What are some successes you have witnessed from implementing the IB Programme at Valley?
Sara: It is an honor to be part of the generational change that we see among our students. Twenty percent of our current freshman class are younger siblings of Valley IB alumni, and that speaks volumes about the support that our students and their families feel. Andrew often says he has the best job, and I’ve started to “borrow” that wording: I truly feel I have the best job, because I get to meet students as early as middle school when they explore their magnet options, teach them in ninth grade, work with them on the Personal Project in tenth, teach some of them again in DP Global Politics (if they choose), and then help them cross the finish line with college applications. The ability to be there for a student for four years is powerful, and we aim for students to stay connected to their teachers throughout.
Andrew spoke above about the amount of time it takes to feel established as an IB educator, and similarly, it takes time to establish and build hype around traditions. Since 2021, it has been a joy to bring back and grow our annual Personal Project and Extended Essay Showcases in the springtime, which are open to the public. As each year of students sees the previous year’s goals, research endeavors, and showcase boards, the event gets more and more elevated. Andrew hustles with community partnerships that he has cultivated (again, over time) through the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Las Vegas program to secure scholarship fund donations so we can celebrate the strongest EEs and Personal Projects in a way that feels tangible to our students.
When we each began our respective IB journeys, I don’t think either of us could have predicted the place our Valley IB community would now be or the changes we’d adapt to and hurdles we’d overcome–and I feel so lucky Andrew spotted me in my first year of teaching and thought, “That’s an IB teacher”--and eventually a coordinator; I am eternally indebted to him, truly. Now, eight years later, as an MYP Coordinator and MYP + DP teacher, my biggest piece of advice to fellow IB teachers and coordinators is to take the first step. Focus on one area this year you want to improve, and take action on it. The IB evaluation process, which we just completed a cycle of back in April, supports this with the programme development plan component. I know Andrew and I are both really taking joy in teaching again, and focusing on specific goals and what our students need.
What were some of the challenges you faced (and might still be facing) when it came/comes to implementing the IB MYP and DP in your school context? Are there any fundamental steps needed to strengthen the students' and teachers' experience?
Andrew: Our school was the only IB school in the area until 1996, when the programme was divided among five schools, each offering a different part of the IB experience. Standing up those new programmes meant drawing on our own faculty, and we have been rebuilding capacity ever since. That history sits alongside a present-day reality: as a Title I school in an older part of Las Vegas, we now compete with charters and magnet schools built over the past decade. We have had to run the programme as much like a small business as a school, with recruitment, communication, and retention strategies, even though none of us entered teaching with business training.
Another challenge is that administrators and district leaders cannot always fully articulate the work behind IB, leaving much of the advocacy, planning, and explanation on the coordinator’s shoulders. Finally, there is a gap in understanding how long it takes to grow an IB teacher; it takes roughly three school years for a new teacher to become fully confident in the programme, yet support and training are often planned as if that timeline were much shorter. Several steps seem fundamental to strengthening the experience for students and teachers.
First, school and district supervisors (or administrators) should attend IB trainings so they understand their role in the programme, allowing the coordinator to focus on instruction and how to serve the programme best, rather than having to be a constant translator. Second, the district and school site should commit to a multi-year support plan for new IB teachers, including mentoring, protected time for professional development, and realistic expectations during their first three years. Third, we should be intentional about telling our story, highlighting what IB offers students in our community so that we remain a strong choice among the newer options. When leaders understand the programme and teachers are given time to grow into it, students benefit from a more confident, consistent IB experience.
Sara: We are lucky to bring together students from dozens of middle schools and to accept students joining up until the start of the Diploma Programme–but that also has posed its challenges. We have more students from our MYP partner middle school than ever before, but two thirds of our freshmen enter Year 4 of the MYP with no IB background.
As public school teachers, we are all used to the reality of starting a school year with students of a huge range of ability levels and needs–and several years ago, I looked to the Approaches to Learning as a clear framework for intentionally meeting freshman students’ needs, especially in the areas of self-management and communication. With the support of our CCSD Director of Magnet Schools, we developed and had approved by the CCSD Curriculum Commission an Approaches to Learning course for the first semester of ninth grade to onboard students to our Valley IB community, to introduce them to the expectations of IB (all the exciting components to look forward to: Personal Project, CAS, the EE), and to meet their needs in critical academic support areas–all rooted in the ATL.
This week, for example, my current students in that class are exchanging study strategies; other weeks, they have guest lessons with their counselor for social-emotional learning, with their future DP math teachers for subject area help, and with our CAS/CE Coordinator to reinforce the skill of reflection. It does not at all replace the role of ATL in every classroom, but rather it supports the unique needs of each cohort. No two years are the same.
I also make space in that class for ongoing community-building to supplement the programme-wide events our IB Council (a mini Student Council comprised of IB students) plans. We have seen our retention increase since implementing the course, and by staying in touch with my MYP colleagues about what is happening in each of their classrooms and how I can support it, the students learn that we as teachers are a community too.
You have expressed a vision of bringing IB schools across Clark County School District together, in order to build a stronger educational community within the district. How could Valley’s work contribute to that wider effort, and what outcomes would you hope for across the district?
Andrew: Our vision has changed as the landscape around public education has changed. School choice continues to expand, federal education policy is in flux, and public schools have somehow become a political debate. Public education has allowed generations of people to rise up and help people build a better life, and I never expected that to become debatable. In this climate, our vision is that we are an IB community first and foremost. That means our students must feel safe, because Maslow’s hierarchy of needs has to be met before a student can truly learn. We surround them with understanding, and we build that understanding on transparency and honesty with our kids.
Valley’s work can strengthen a district-wide IB community by modeling what that looks like in practice. What I hope for across the district is a connected network of IB schools that share resources, language, and training, so that no school and no new IB teacher has to build the work alone, and so that every student, in every neighborhood, has access to an education that treats them as whole people.
Sara: I feel like we are solidly on our way to that network. I leave our district IB PLCs and coordinator meetings and my Valley Individuals & Societies vertical PLC more invigorated than any other collaboration or meeting time. I truly feel that I work alongside the best of the best through the IB network.
The IB’s mission of Education for a better world really starts in each of our classrooms, yet it connects us throughout the district–just as it does as IB educators across the globe. It’s often not too hard to find fellow educators with whom we share the why of teaching; what’s rarer, yet what genuine buy-in to IB enables, is connecting with educators with whom we share the how. Our vision is, through collaboration, to create cultures of skill-based, action-oriented learning in each of our classrooms and to empower the next generation of lifelong learners here in the Las Vegas Valley and beyond.
Thank you…
Thank you, Sara and Andrew, for taking the time to share your work at Valley High School with us!
Sofía and I are inspired, excited and looking forward to deepening our work together, especially in the key, and much needed strategy of strengthening and integrating the Theory of Knowledge course to enhance students’ experience and performance in the IB Diploma Programme.
If you’re interested in learning more about how they have built their IB Programme within the context of a U.S. public school, please don’t be shy about reaching out to them.
See you next week.
What Else I’m Working On...
Nobel Algarve Almancil - I'm super excited to be traveling to Nobel Algarve Almancil school in Portugal to work with their IB faculty on the Extended Essay. We’ll spend an entire day day focused on strengthening supervision, building greater consistency across the school, and creating clearer systems to support students throughout the process.
Effectively Supervising the Extended Essay in Any Subject- November 7th, 2026 - Once again, this workshop is filling up early this year. It is focused and practical workshop is designed to help teachers confidently navigate the updated Extended Essay framework for the Class of 2027. Together, we’ll explore what’s changed, what’s stayed the same, and how to effectively guide students through both the Subject-Focused and Interdisciplinary pathways.
In-Person Professional Workshops - If your school would like a tailored training on the updated Extended Essay guidelines, we’d love to help—onsite at your campus or live online—just send me an email at [email protected] and we’ll work together to make it happen.
Brad Cartwright
1,800+ IB Educators Trained | 650+ IB Schools | 120+ Countries