Today we went on a field trip to the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry http://learningstorm.org. Jeff Hopkins shared information about how this private high school works. Tuition costs $7000 which covers the price to run the school. They receive less funding than public schools. His goal is to make this school accessible to more people and eventually continue decreasing the cost for students. All learning is inquiry and project based. Students can research their own interests or topics relating to their everyday life. Such topics typically cover most of regular high school curriculum so competencies are not an issue. Success rates of graduate students are also high. He gave a few examples of students in grade 12 who are simultaneously taking courses at the University of Victoria. Another extraordinary example is a 16 year old female student who will be working as aTA at UVic. There are no bells at the school. Breaks and lunch periods are taken as felt necessary by students. There are few classrooms, a quiet area, a sensory room, a couple conference rooms and other than that plenty of tables and areas for students to work at their own pace. To keep track of their own learning students use Trello and teachers can then monitor their progress that way. There are no grades or assessments throughout the year until the end of the school year. Even then they use an overlapping scale to show inquiry progress and understanding. Jeff hopes that more public schools take on this type of learning. This includes Elementary schools by weaving inquiry into any subject of any grade level. Students take about a month and a half to get used to this way of learning when they first attend the school in grade 9. He referred to this period as the faking it period where students fake their way through inquiry learning and may take a more shallow approach to finding their interests as they are still conditioned to the public school structured system of learning. These students often research what they think they are expected to learn before realizing there is no expectations and there are few limitations. Teachers at this school check in with students about their topics and questions and provide the resources that they can. Not all inquiry learning is individual and some work requires collaboration. There is a play that is fully organized by students where they form groups and work collaboratively on different parts of the play. Examples include making the sets, sound system, visuals etc. Overall this idea of inquiry based schooling is really interesting and can be beneficial but like most things it is not for everyone.

competencies covered: assessment