This week we learned all about the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) from principal Jeff Hopkins. I found it to be a really interesting opportunity to see how a big focus of the theory covered in the program (inquiry based learning) is being put into practice at the secondary level. I think it can often be difficult to understand how to fully embrace a theory in the day to day reality of our teaching, and I had a lot of questions about what inquiry might look like on the ground:
- How much inquiry can students handle? You can fully commit to a deep investigation of only so many topics at once.
- How do you cover all of the specifics of the curriculum?
- How does assessment work, especially if work product isn’t necessarily part of the inquiry process?
Jeff gave some great insight into these issues, and PSII serves as a proof of concept – operating very substantially on an inquiry based model, they have grappled with all of these questions and more. In particular, Jeff highlighted the infrastructure put in place to guide students on forming and executing their inquiries, the flexibility of instruction that meets the needs of individual inquiries while also covering any necessary gaps in curricular content, and assessing both outcomes of learning and the process itself through regular student-teacher check-ins.
Trevor Mackenzie was also raised as another great local resource.
Image from trevormackenzie.com
