Director of Counseling Mr. Matt Sowers confirmed on January 9 that IB Theory of Knowledge, a class required for the IB Diploma, will no longer be offered in the morning and will expand over two full school years. This adjustment was confirmed shortly after the course selection fair that was held during Stable Group and Mustang Block today. 

In past years, TOK has been offered both during the school day and before school hours, a 7 a.m. class referred to as “morning TOK.” Regardless of the class time, TOK traditionally began the second semester of the student’s junior year and finished after the first semester of their senior year. This would total to one full year of instruction and 1.0 credits. 

However, new plans fostered by Meridian’s administrators and counselors will change the way students can take the class starting with the class of 2025. TOK will now be a two-year course for students, lasting the entirety of their junior and senior years. The course will also no longer be offered in the morning. 

Mr. Sowers reported having “numerous meetings” with the high school administration and IB Coordinator Mr. Josh Singer to make the “hard decision” to discontinue morning TOK, with no plans of repealing their decision. 

To justify the changes, Mr. Sowers cited staffing concerns and suggestions made by a group of IB evaluators who visited the school last year. The evaluators commented that by stretching the course out over two years, as many other IB world schools already do, diploma candidates would be able to use class time to work on all three portions of the required IB Diploma Programme “core”: Theory of Knowledge, the Extended Essay, and CAS.

“It is really difficult to track students with both of those [the Extended Essay and CAS],” Mr. Sowers noted, “so the recommendation was to embed this into the schedule and make it a full year, and you can progress monitor a lot more.”

These changes, however, will impact some IB Diploma candidates as taking morning TOK allowed them some flexibility in their schedule to take an additional elective or course. 

“It is causing big problems in my schedule and classes I’m able to take,” sophomore Katherine Steyn explained. “I now will not be able to go for the IB Diploma if I want to take Sports Medicine.”

When pressed on how the administration would respond to the community’s reaction towards the TOK scheduling changes, Mr. Sowers said that he will “listen, validate, hear, get additional feedback, and report back to the rest of the admin team.”

Mr. Sowers also clarified the scheduling change will not impact the current juniors, but instead will begin with the current sophomores.