Pushing the Envelope

For today’s class, we adventured out to PSII (Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry) in downtown Victoria. The principal and founder of the school, Jeff Hopkins, greeted our group and talked to us about the school and the pedagogy behind his teaching methods. I grew up in B.C. in the public school system as a French Immersion student. My experience K-12 was quite traditional in terms of testing and assessment. So, this school seems a little out of the ordinary to me and, at first, it doesn’t seem like it would be that effective. However, as we walked around the school, I found lots of students collaborating and working together on their projects.

I did wonder how the school worked within the confines of the B.C. curriculum. Jeff told us that PSII receives 50% of public funding, which requires the students to be B.C. residents, pay taxes, and the school must not spend more per pupil than the average school district. That means that the students must take all required courses (and exams) to graduate with a high school diploma. These exams include the new literacy and numeracy assessments in Grades 10 and upward. Jeff said that the students usually feel prepared enough to take these exams without traditional classes to prepare for the tests.

I noticed that the students had a lot of freedom in their daily schedules and were free to do whatever they needed to work on their personal (or group) inquiries. I do like this set-up, but I’m not sure it would work for every student. I also believe that too much freedom can cause some students to lose focus on their tasks. I did like the idea that students were free to ask for help from any teacher and that learning was co-constructed by the teacher and the learner.

I’m not sure how this system would work for an elementary school. However, with some tweaking, I’m sure that a learning system similar to PSII could work in an elementary setting.

Find out more about PSII at their website here.