Today we had the chance to visit Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII) and hear a bit of their experience as an advanced school. The way the pedagogy is set up at the school is in a way that tailors to the learning of the students. It offers a personalized education experience where the responsibility is all on the students since all their learning is inquiry based. It puts the students in the driver’s seat of their own learning because they get to choose what they would like to learn about and think of inquiry questions to explore their idea. They then take a number of steps where they research around their questions and revise them afterwards.

I found that school very inspiring because I would like to implement a few of their strategies as a teacher myself. I would love to allow my students to explore different inquiry questions in the given subject and self-pace their own learning. I found it really interesting how Jeff Hopkins, the founder and principal of the school, was talking about how there are no traditional classrooms or lecturing. The teachers act more like tutors to help guide the students with inquiry in their own topic rather than lecture for an hour about a topic the students have no interest in. Also, all the students that attend want to be there as opposed to being forced there by their parents. I strongly feel this independent school should be funded equally as the public schools but unfortunately, they get less than half the funding. I think that independent schools like PSII are the future and that should be implemented in all countries across the world that have the adequate resources.