Today we went to the Pacific School for Innovation and Inquiry in downtown Victoria. This was a super neat experience. I attended a public high school so to see a more independent one was fascinating. All work that students do in this school is up to them. They create their own projects through a learning plan. These projects allow them to cover all the bases required to graduate from a regular high school. Their projects fully depend on what they are interested in. It is fully outside of the traditional idea of what happens in school. Teachers are supporting roles not the main role. Students have the freedom to guide their own learning. One of the big things that stuck with me was the guidance in terms of marks. It is required in BC in order to be a recognized institute for students to take high school that they need number grades. However, in PSII the teachers are able to let students know what their projects mark will most likely be. He gave us the example of “say a student brings their project to me and they have completed all the tasks they have laid out. I can then tell them “hey this project will most likely be around an 80″ and depending on if they were hoping on a better mark or not they can change it.” They help guide their students to achieving the grades they want. It fully runs on the effort and time they put into something and therefore they learn that this is an important drive to have. This idea is super cool to me as in many of our classes we have been discussing letter grading assessment. Even our program is trying to take our letter grading as this tech class is a completion course. However, this idea is super interesting as an alternative. In a more open and autonomic setting students can strive to get the marks they want by being actively involved. They then can understand that accomplishment is due to hard work and effort and therefore they can all achieve if they try.
As I am becoming an elementary teacher many of the things I have taken from this are not extremely practical. However, I do believe that as an elementary teacher I have a duty to set students up for their later schooling. Even at a young age students need to be given say in their learning. Who am I to decide the specific ways in which students will take things in? Now the issue with this comes from the way in which traditional schooling has been outlined; I am unable to create individual learning plans for 25 different young students. This idea becomes much more practical as they get older and more competent in creating their own learning plans. As an elementary teacher the biggest thing I can do is give my students choice. Choice is what drives the PSII school and I saw first hand how well that worked. Giving students choice is something we have talked about in many classes. Allowing students to gain autonomy over their learning at such a young age can allow them to some day jump right into an environment like PSII and thrive. This will also help to assist students with learning disabilities as a question was raised about that today. PSII has been a place for many students with learning disabilities to go to be more in-charge of their own learning. This is something that serves as a large challenge in public schooling is catering to the needs of all students. I think that public schools can learn a lot of good tricks from this independent school and I was very happy we got to go check it out!
