Blog 9: A school of free inquiries.

This week, our class had the pleasure of having Jeff Hopkins as our guest speaker. Jeff Hopkins is the founder and principal of Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry, a high school in Victoria, BC that promotes and pushes for a different kind of learning for students. Like any other public or private school, students graduate with a regular BC Dogwood Certificate, and can attend universities, colleges and the like. What’s different about the school is how much freedom students have in choosing their learning path. Learning is through an inquiry process; students ask questions that naturally lead to more questions. These questions are then researched, experienced, tested, demonstrated, etc. This method of teaching and learning touches on curricular competencies such as english, math, art, and so on.

I found this school intriguing, as I personally have a lot of experience with alternative schools. I have gone to Waldorf, public schools, outdoor based programs, hybrid programs, homeschool, and I am interested in many of these for when I personally go into teaching. Something Jeff spoke about with PSII, is his mention of how a teacher teaches. In mainstream schools, teachers are “everything”. They know everything, they plan everything, they teach everything. In PSII, a teacher is a facilitator of learning. They guide the students towards a better understanding, and provide resources – including people – that would allow students to get the best information possible. I really like this approach because I think as an aspiring teacher, one of my bigger fears is that I don’t know everything, and that I won’t be able to teach everything and answer all the questions that students may have. This is a great reminder that we don’t actually need to know everything, and that there are so many people who do know specific topic areas that we can bring into the classroom.

I’m grateful that there are so many kinds of schools that people can go into other than public and private schools. The world is filled with diverse learners who all intake information and demonstrate their knowledge in many different ways. “Normal school” may not work for everyone, and having these alternative options makes learning much more accessible and open for all.