Week 6: Alternative Schools

I really enjoyed our presentation from Jeff Hopkins this week. There is no doubt he is passionate about what he is doing and I appreciate that he was willing to answer all of our questions. In all honesty, Jeff’s presentation challenged my educational beliefs. I think I mentioned in my Week 2 post that I am someone who has loved school all my life. The current education system “worked” for me. I say worked in quotation marks because the definition of if something worked or not could vary from person to person. My definition is that I enjoyed school, I feel a learnt a lot of important skills, and I was often interested the material. It is important to note that I did not grow up in BC. I grew up in Saskatchewan, which is where all of my K-12 schooling took place. While the curriculums vary between the provinces, the structure remains relatively the same. Now, if you were to ask me do I think the education system is perfect in BC or Saskatchewan I would say no, absolutely not. There are things I wished I could change throughout all of elementary and high school. There are skills I wish school would have taught me. There are things that I know I want to do better when I become a teacher because of what I experienced in school. At the same time, my experience as a student has led me to wanting to be a teacher.

Jeff made a comment in his presentation that they have intentionally designed PSII so that any high school or middle school (maybe even elementary) could be transformed into an inquiry based school. He also made a comment that the shift from traditional schools to inquiry based schools is happening right now. These two things scared me as a future educator. From my own inquiry project and other conversations I understand the benefit of inquiry based learning. I think it is extremely important for students to learn how to do inquiry and do it well. I also don’t think that the way we set up our school days with different activities and subjects is a bad thing. Setting up and running a classroom with my students doing lessons and activities throughout the day is something I have dreamed of my whole life. So, hearing about completely tearing apart the education system and replacing it with something like a inquiry based school doesn’t line up with what I envisioned for my teaching career.

With that in mind, I also said that there are many things we need to change in our education system. I asked Jeff if he thought there could ever be a hybrid created with the traditional system and inquiry system? His answer was that when he started at PSII he thought there could be a hybrid, but now that he’s built up so much over nine years he no longer believes that. Personally, I would disagree with Jeff. I think that we can bring inquiry based learning into traditional schools and I think that bringing it in would help solve a lot of our other problems. For example, inquiry is really great for bringing multiple subjects together, so instead of chunking our day in rigid sections we could explore projects and make the day more fluid. Another challenge in our school system is that assessment tools are not meeting a range of student needs. With inquiry, the teacher can decided with the student how they will be assessed and what the criteria will be, which means each assessment plan can be suited for each student’s needs.

The problem with our school system isn’t that we can’t do alternative ways of learning. I think the problem is we are still teaching teachers to be traditional in their instruction and in their assessment. I understand teachers in traditional schools are bound by a system and maybe because I am not a certified teacher yet I don’t understand the system well enough. However, from what I’ve seen and heard I think there is room to be flexible. Teaching at PSII would not be my first choice because like I said I enjoy the structure of school the way it is. With that being said, I would be right on board if teachers were being taught to teach from an inquiry model and were given the time/resources needed to meet individual student needs in the classroom.

I am thankful for our time with Jeff because he has shown us that there are different ways to do school and there are things that we can do as teachers in the classroom to make the school experience more beneficial for our students. While I may not be right on board with PSII, I appreciate our common goal to make school a place where students can explore new skills and start building their path forward.