I really enjoyed our guest speaker today, Jeff Hopkins, who spoke about the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry in Victoria, BC. His energy and commitment to inquiry-based learning was contagious! Jeff spoke a bit about PSII and his passion for providing an opportunity for learners to learn differently from the mainstream. There is lots of useful information on their website which can be found here. 

I think.. 

I think it’s really admirable to learn from people like Jeff who have a vision for their students and put their entire lives into making that become a reality. The fact of the matter is, the BC public education systems fails many of it’s students on a daily basis. It makes my heart really happy to see that there are opportunities out there for students to pursue learning in a way that works for them. I also really like to see education frameworks that encourage student agency and autonomy.  

I know… 

One of the things that hasn’t been made explicitly clear to me is how teacher who value inquiry-based learning implement inquiry into their classrooms if they don’t work in an independent school such as PSII. I feel like this is something that I need to pursue further on my own as the values that Jeff spoke of such as student autonomy and agency, self-regulation, and competency-based learning really resonates with me. After this class, I took the opportunity to watch Jeff’s TedTalk which I have linked below. 

I wonder… 

There has been a lot of talk in my classes about inquiry, but it is still a little unclear to me what that looks like for a me, a pre-service teacher heading into my final year of school with two practicum experiences ahead of me. Is there any value in trying to implement inquiry into the classrooms during my practicum? Is it possible to do an inquiry in such a short period of time?