Our guest speaker for this week was Jeff Hopkins, the principal and founder at PSII, the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry. He used to be a superintendent at another school district in British Columbia but decided to start a non-profit, independent school where you can build anything from 0 instead of having to work inside a system. He decided to start this school because of the knowing-doing gap in current education systems here in British Columbia. The separation between them started to wear him down and the frustration of the regime of the timetable and the strict time constructs of learning lead him to break away from the curriculum of public schools. He also liked the idea of personalizing learning and having the opportunity to explore a concept freely through a way that makes sense to them. It is difficult to implement this system into schools here in British Columbia because of how strict the curriculum is here.

The idea behind this school is that students come up with an inquiry through the steps of:

  • Begin to generate question
  • Initial research
  • New questions: reframed, deeper, more
  • Develop learning activities
  • Execute learning activities
  • Assessment occurs throughout the whole time

I loved the idea of having a reason to know information for students inquiry instead of just covering content. This talk really opened my eyes as to how important allowing students to regulate is. When you give students different environments that they can choose to be in, they can better regulate learning. Student autonomy allows students to decide what they want to focus on and where they need to work. I thought it was cool how instead of having cookie cutter classrooms there was differentiated spaces such as studio spaces, a quiet floor, tech areas and group work areas. Allowing students to balance independent and group work outside of classrooms gives more time to work with students one on one inside of classes as a teacher.

As a future educator, I love the idea of allowing students to engage with learning through their interests and what motivates them. I feel like this is the future of education and can lead to a better quality of knowledge instead of focusing on just the quantity which can be taught. The thing that excites me about this model is how teachers can really support their students by having the time and resources to teach them and connect with them through their passions. The one thing that I wish could change about PSII is for any student could have access to it. Right now it is about 1100$ a year to attend PSII which is unattainable for a lot of families. This means that so many students who struggle with the traditional learning systems in place right now do not have access to an education that could benefit them. Hopefully one day, education will be remodelled around students interests and learners will be encouraged to learn differently at different times instead of just curriculum coverage.