The Okaloosa County School Board approved a new Film Studies course for Choctawhatchee High School’s International Baccalaureate program on Monday, expanding options for students in the prestigious academic program.

• The Film Studies course will begin in the 2025-2026 school year, providing an additional elective in the arts discipline required for an IB diploma.

“We’re trying to build the program and give students more options,” said Anna Godoy, IB coordinator at Choctawhatchee High School. “We wanted to give students something different and something fun that they could do in the area of the arts if they weren’t painters or photographers.”

Choctawhatchee High School is the only IB school in Okaloosa, Walton and Santa Rosa counties, drawing students from across the region, including military families who specifically seek out IB schools. The nearest IB schools are in Escambia and Bay counties.

• “We actually pull quite a few students each year from Navarre and from beyond the Walton County line because they want to come to an IB school,” Godoy said.

The international program started in Switzerland in the 1960s and now includes about 5,000 schools worldwide, with students taking identical tests regardless of their location.

“Our students are literally taking the exact same tests in their junior and senior year as students in Finland and Spain and China and Morocco,” Godoy said. “There’s this international standard that’s really strong academically.”

The IB program currently has about 270 students at Choctaw, with enrollment highest in 9th grade and tapering in later years. The school has approximately 120 ninth graders, 100 tenth graders, 39 juniors and 31 seniors in the program. Florida offers a unique “Florida Pre-IB” program for 9th and 10th graders before they enter the global diploma program as juniors and seniors.

In the new Film Studies course, students will examine various roles in filmmaking, from lighting to directing to cinematography. They will study film techniques and create their own short films as part of their assessment.

• “Students will be looking at how the lighting works, how sound effects work, what the director did, what the storyboard would have been like,” Godoy said. “They will actually fulfill those roles themselves.”

Students will create up to 12 minutes of film divided into four sections, with the longest individual film being three minutes. They will primarily use school equipment, including cell phones and available technology.

Contrary to common misconceptions, the IB program is open to any interested students who maintain at least a 2.0 GPA, not just those with exceptionally high academic achievements.

• “I think the biggest misconception is that if you do IB, you can’t do anything else,” Godoy said. “Our students are class presidents, they’re in the band, they’re cheerleaders. We have football players, soccer players, swimmers – they’re incredibly involved in the school.”

The program requires students to take advanced courses across all six academic disciplines: language and literature, language acquisition, individuals and societies, sciences, mathematics, and the arts. At Choctaw, these include English, French or Spanish, history, economics, philosophy, biology, chemistry, and visual arts. This comprehensive approach differentiates it from other advanced programs.

IB also uses a different assessment approach than other programs. “We do testing throughout the year,” Godoy said. “The scores are broken up through very pragmatic, very reasonable requirements and tests that students can do very well on, even when they’re not great at a standardized style.”

• “I don’t think there is any other program that prepares students for university and for life with such integrity and such depth,” Godoy added.

IB provides significant benefits beyond academic rigor. Students who complete the full IB diploma automatically qualify for the highest level of Florida’s Bright Futures scholarship, covering 100% of tuition regardless of standardized test scores or GPA.

The Film Studies course will be open to 11th and 12th graders, with priority given to IB students, though non-IB upperclassmen can also register. The school needs 25-30 students to register for the course to be officially offered in the fall.

Choctaw has offered the IB program since the mid-1990s, continuously updating courses to remain relevant. For more information about the IB program, parents can contact the school directly or view the school’s website.