#isrosemao

Last week, three members of my PLC and I visited the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) in Victoria, BC.  What an amazing place! It's probably what solidified our plans to actually figure out the logistics of our proposed whole-grade inquiry on water.

The school is one big open space with smaller break-out rooms around it. There are learners' inquiry maps posted on every wall; there is a schedule of all the seminars for the coming weeks (learners choose to attend only the ones they need); there is a kitchen where learners can create recipes and cook; there is a workshop for building things; there is a dress-makers work space; there is a 3D printer, for goodness sake!  The thing that has the most impact though is that the learners have a ton of freedom to move and work where they wish.

And, don't get me wrong: teens are still teens. Not all learners were "on task" all the time, but ALL of them recognized that they eventually did have to document something about their learning. Everything that we talk about as educators when it comes to 21st century learning and best practise exits at PSII... self-regulation is an understatement.

I had the opportunity to chat with two learners: one is in "Grade 11" doing podcasts on pop-culture connections to literary classics; the other one is in "Grade 9" whose inquiry centres around the Heroes of WWII.  Both were able to tell me what curricular outcomes their inquiry met. The Grade 9 boy said:

"Part of my inquiry is fulfilling some History 12 outcomes; the way I'm choosing to present everything is covering Information Technology; and because I've decided to actually do the training program the military does, I'm doing my DPA (Daily Physical Activity, a ministry requirement at each grade level)."

I was struck by the incredibly purposeful and completely personalized learning going on, and by the absence of any desire amongst the learners for a letter grade or a percentage.  In fact, when I asked Jeff Hopkins, the founder of PSII about how the report card looks, he told me the percentages arrive out of a conference with each learner and all the learners know that they will be assessed on the learning outcomes they fulfill and how deeply they fulfill them.  Learners are responsible for documenting all their learning electronically, via Quio.

There are so many more anecdotes I can share, but maybe the twitter feed of our experience is better "real time" reading. Check #isrosemao.  Rose Pillay, a consultant with the CISVA liased with Jeff to arrange the visist - the hashtag is a tribute to some of her wise words.

PBL or Bust!

Okay. I figure I'd better document this whole "grade eights do the Inquiry on Water" thingamabob in January.

The story of how we even decided to attempt Problem Based Leaning at my school goes back to the Building Expert PLCs our previous principal created.  You can read all about it on his blog. Anyway, a few of us had spent the better part of two years learning about inquiry / problem / project based learning - we even tried versions of PBL in our own classes.

When Johnny left, we got stuck in limbo. We had always planned on implementing PBL school wide, but we didn't know how. More correctly, we didn't know how it would be received and none of us were ready to take the fall out. All we knew was that by September of last year, we had reached the apex of our learning around PBL and inquiry.  We needed to actually put the theories in action.

We hummed and hawed about even continuing to meet as a PLC and even toyed with the idea of letting the dream die.  Even the two administrators who were in our PLC were ready to move on - they were still supportive, but the business of helping to run the rest of the school no longer afforded them the time to think about the logistics of actually "doing" inquiry.

I forget exactly how it all got decided, but I remember a colleague saying, "We just need to do this now!" We eventually came back together, talked more, and planned an actual proposal for the staff.

And now, here we are... in the supposed "Prep Phase" fumbling our way through tech issues and questions from other staff about room switches and course content and logistics of space and I'm still trying to accept the fact that it's going to be messy!