Today, we visited the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry.

It was such a cool experience to not only hear first hand the process of opening a school, but to see an “ideal education model” in practice. Throughout the first few months of the PPD Program, and over arching theme has been that the system is broken, but we are slowly trying to fix it. It seems as though PSII is on the right track for what education SHOULD be, in a perfect world.

I had the opportunity to sit with a student as he walked me through his inquiry project. It was amazing to hear how many “subjects” he was covering by exploring something he truly WANTED to explore. BINGO. Relevant, interesting, engaging.

So, why aren’t we all doing this?

Because – it’s not so simple.

1. To have an inquiry based school, the school needs to stay small. There is a maximum size cap in order to maintain the integrity of student driven learning.
2. Students need to be intrinsically motivated. This model isn’t for everyone.
3. It takes time to change the “system”

It was an honour to be welcomed into such an innovative learning environment. Although I may never open my own school, its possible to weave these practices into my own class.