In 2021, while working at an educational institution in Hong Kong, I wanted to improve my teaching skills. However, a PGDE required a full year of full-time study, the tuition was too expensive, and the qualification was only applicable in Hong Kong. At the time, I had already begun planning to move abroad, so I wanted to pursue a diploma or certificate that would also allow me to teach overseas.
Later, I discovered the IB educator certificate. Since I was planning to study in Canada at the time, I naturally chose the University of Windsor’s online IB PYP (Primary Years Programme) certificate program in Canada. The program lasted one year and two months and consisted of five courses, with the option to take two courses at the same time. The total cost was approximately HK$20,000.
Most of the time, I arranged my own schedule around the assignments set by the instructors. Only once, because of the time difference, did I have to give a presentation in the middle of the night.
I have already forgotten the specific course content, but the change in my outlook was profound. It was as though I had attended an international school myself and been educated all over again. Throughout the program, what had the greatest impact on me was the first course’s learning objectives for IB learners, because they differed greatly from the education and culture I had grown up with.
The first objective was to become a risk-taker—to embrace challenges and change, and to welcome an uncertain future, provided that one has thought things through and prepared thoroughly.
The second was to become a communicator—to be able to express oneself confidently in more than one language, because this helps us better understand people from different cultural backgrounds rather than seeing the world solely in terms of “us” and “them” within a single cultural context.
The third was to be open-minded—to respect one’s own history and culture and those of others equally, to evaluate different perspectives with as little bias as possible, and to be willing to grow through the experience of engaging with others.
I believe these three points differed most significantly from the educational environment in which I grew up. The culture around me from childhood encouraged the pursuit of stability rather than the embrace of uncertainty—mainly reflected in taking civil service exams or entering the public sector. It was also linguistically and culturally homogeneous—primarily Chinese—and centered its own culture rather than respecting multiculturalism and accepting other people’s differences.
In addition, the instructor for my first IB course recorded a self-introduction video. When I saw that she was covered in tattoos from her neck all the way down both arms, I was quite shocked, but I also thought it was pretty cool. I suppose that also counted as a kind of “culture shock.”