For today’s class, we went on a field trip to PSII (The Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry). Its right here in our own city of downtown Victoria. We got a tour from the founder and Principal Jeff Hopkins. There is around 95 students at this school that range from grades 9-12 and 7 adult helpers. The school is fully inquiry based and Jeff took us through how their operation works, while allowing the students to have choice and meeting the curriculum goals of math, science, social studies, english, etc. They use many online platforms to keep track of their work such as Trello, which we also use in our Tech class. This is a great way for students to stage engaged and focused in class because they’re following what they want to learn about, but also learning all there is to know about the different general subject areas. It’s hard for me to understand this concept just because we’ve only started learning about it this year. I find it challenging for myself to switch my mindset like this, but some of the inquiry projects I’ve done already have been great because I’ve been learning what I want to learn about, while still meeting the criteria for the assignment.

A couple students in our classroom went to Rebecca Bathurst-Hunt‘s classroom after this field trip and told the rest of the class that she is pursing inquiry in her Kindergarten classroom. I now follow her on Instagram and it’s so interesting watching all the projects she does that relate to the curriculum, but are invented for the students to engage with questions they want to engage with.

Madi 🙂