Photo by Orest Yaremchuk on Unsplash

Converted

‘Skeptical’ described me best, before I started to research the Pacific School of Innovation & Inquiry. Was this just a fad school? My conversion began, though, when I researched a couple of things at the school: the inquiry process flowchart, and the Google calendar of daily classes. I would want to go to school there! The classes looked truly interesting. And to attend them for curiousity and to support my own research, rather than for a mark? Amazing. Then we got to visit the school itself, which confirmed that the school is on to something.

Fast facts

  • “Learners”, not “students”
  • 95 students, approximately
  • 7 full-time teachers
  • Learners pay about $7,000 a year
  • The school is independent, but still falls within the BC system, so it does get audited, and the teachers have to convert the learners’ work into standard course grades.
  • Learners use Trello to manage work
  • The school has its own digital portfolio system

What really stood out

  • Learners are liberated. One of the learners, a ninth grader, happened to wander into the room while Jeff Hopkins, the founder and principal, was introducing us to the school. She talked about her former school being like a “cage”. She said that even on a bad day, she learns more here than on a good day in public school. She talked about the excitement of learning from her peers. I think she did a better job of selling the school than any adult could have. It really made me think about the harm that traditional education can do to people. There’s a lot of constraint creating pressure. It’s quite a leap of imagination to consider scrapping it and creating something new, like PSII, but… hey, the current educational model is a made-up social construct, to begin with.
  • Teachers are liberated, too. Instead of spending most time on class prep, “classroom management”, and marking the same work by multiple students, teachers get to support unique inquiry projects. As Jeff said, there is still a lot of work, but it’s very different work. To me, it looks like teachers get to focus on being continual learners, and connectors.
  • Jeff Hopkins is enthusiastic. This isn’t a joke or a dig. He has a quality that reminds me of en entrepreneur or an NGO founder – a real excitement that fuels ongoing work. Sadly, I don’t see this very often with teachers. I see people who are content, or good-intentioned, but also often downtrodden, tired, lacklustre… focused on the constraints of their jobs. It’s refreshing seeing someone bring so much enthusiasm to the field of education.

There is more I could talk about – like the entrepreneurial qualities that seem to be developing in the learners, too – but I want to end with a reflection on a good question that a peer asked of Jeff: considering that most of us will end up in the standard public system, with time blocks and similar constraints, what can we do to advance this approach, recognizing that it does seem to be better? Basically: weave in inquiry and innovation where we can; advocate for a shift (as Jeff says, he wants to go out of business by having all BC schools pick up this approach); and hey, maybe tap him for help in creating a new school like this. He did say they were at capacity, and looking to support new versions. Maybe a forward-looking town somewhere in British Columbia…? 🙂