This week we had a presentation from Jeff Hopkins about his school The Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII). I really loved getting a chance to hear about this school. It seems like an incredibly good approach to teaching that is deeply beneficial for the students. This model seems like an effective way of achieving my personal goals of wanting to educate in a way that doesn’t bar neurodivergent students from learning about the world. Its a bit scary to approach an education system that has been created totally from scratch, but it seems scary in a good way to me. I think that inquiry schools like this are extremely promising and the future of education. I think a lot of my fear comes from the pressure of wanting to do this system justice so it can catch on, rather than me being afraid of something new. Most of my experience with traditional models of education have been as a student. I was lucky with my ADHD being stereotypical enough to have it noticed early. Lots of students don’t have this luxury though and plenty of students with ADHD can make it through school fine without medication. These students aren’t lucky for that though. Frequently they reach university and suddenly face deep crises and need to jump through the extremely complicated hoops surrounding adult ADHD diagnoses. I think inquiry models help students with ADHD learn in so many beneficial ways. They learn the content, but the introspection and critical thinking really helps them learn about themselves too. Jeff discussed a student with ADHD and how she uses different spaces to accomplish work. I found it really uplifting to hear about a student figuring out strategies that took me until halfway through my undergrad to figure out.

I would really love to work in an inquiry school. The freedom and flexibility is scary, but deeply exciting at the same time. It gives so much room for students to take control of their own learning and give feedback to teachers. It can feel like a more complicated system, but I think teachers are often more afraid of the sudden loss of control and authority that they’ll need to go through. It’s scary to trust students with so much responsibility, but honestly if someone can’t trust students like that I don’t think they’d be the best at teaching in general. Trusting students with genuine responsibility like this requires teachers to see students as human beings. I think this process of trust would be incredibly great for students and teachers. Students deal with a lot of condescension and the devaluing of their experiences can be frustrating at best and totally alienating at worst. Inquiry models of education not only get rid of this effect, but replace it with something truly beneficial for students. The process of inquiry gives students confidence in themselves and a sense of control. This can fundamentally shift student’s self-image from a position where they see themselves as just inherently not good at something to a position where they believe themselves capable of overcoming obstacles and learning. This goes for specific subjects too. Students can see themselves as scientists, artists, mathematicians, philosophers, and countless other members of society in the present. Students aren’t forced to wait until they’ve spent mountains of effort, time, and money in a post-secondary institution to feel like they’ve earned that title. Students can internalize those titles because they’ve gone through processes truly representative of those fields. Memorizing scientific information doesn’t make students feel like scientists and has the potential to make them believe that scientists just do work rote memorization for a career. Giving students a chance to explore science through inquiry gives them an opportunity to truly do science.

This presentation has given me a lot to think about. I saw PSII as an appealing institution beforehand, but now I see it as something that I really want to fight to get involved with. Regardless of whether or not I end up there, I think these models of inquiry can be extremely beneficial in all teaching environments. Jeff brought up that they were helping Reynolds with setting up a program and I believe that is their Flex program? I talked with a teacher at Esquimalt High School who did his practicum in that program and it seems really appealing. I’d love to try to create programs like that in public schools, I feel like the future talk we’ll be having will help give me some strategies for doing that as well. No matter where my career in education goes, I’d like inquiry to be a core part of it. Even a regular classroom that isn’t in an inquiry institution or part of a special program would benefit so much inquiry strategies. I’ve been in a few high school science programs that have genuinely made me upset at how unengaging they present science. Science is really important to me and was one of the first things to make me truly start wondering about the world around me. It really changed my perspective to one of almost constant questioning and observing. It gave me a really good perspective to see the beauty of the world and students missing out on that is just deeply depressing.

PSII has made some absolutely phenomenal resources for inquiry strategies and assessment. I’m going to attach them to this post so that I can have easy access to them later on. Assessment is something Jeff talked about as being a critical aspect of what they were looking for in teachers. I see assessment as something that should allow students to apply their understanding in critical ways. This will show that they know the material and they know how to use it, but most importantly it will help foster critical thinking in students. I find myself thinking of Dr. Blades’ Explore, Discuss, Understand (E.D.U) model a lot and the ways that it can be used to assess students. I’m going to keep assessment in mind and really try to study the core competency assessment forms that P.S.I.I has developed. I think that they’re a great resources and would be really beneficial for my own understanding of how to approach assessment. The other thing they are looking for in teachers are broad passions outside of just their teachable. I feel somewhat confident about this requirement? My ADHD makes me really hyperfixate on my hobbies which is honestly something I really love. I can get passionate about subjects and topics super easily and I feel like an environment like an inquiry institute would be a great place for me because talking with students about their projects seems like a ton of fun. I really like things like art and writing so I think it would be fun to bring that to a classroom and try to integrate it with scientific concepts that are often difficult to pin down and give students context for. I’ll need to spend some time reflecting on my own hobbies and passions. Just saying “I’m enthusiastic about everything and would love to work with students on whatever it is they’re interested in” probably won’t give people a good picture of me. I’m really glad to have that idea in the back of my mind now though. I think the topics of visual art, the social contexts that affect trends in them, and how they use things like colour would be a good starting place. I’m not sure how well I can predict what I’m going to be engaged with though. I might just try to be introspective as things come up and try to take step backs to understand what I like about them.

Resources

From-Neurons-to-NeighborhoodsDownload
  • PSII Media and Outreach
    • TONS of incredibly useful CC resources here, will include the ones we discussed in class below, but will take a deeper look at all of them
    • PSII Assessment Framework
      • STUDY this, seems extremely beneficial and something I’d like to understand thoroughly
    • PSII Inquiry Flowchart
    • PSII Approach to learning diagram
      • Good connections to BC curriculum, literacies, and the values that PSII see as most important for students as members of society
      • I’m really on board with the things that PSII values. I think they’re all vital traits for people to engaging in meaningful ways with their communities and society.