Wow. I am feeling very inspired after this afternoon’s guest speaker, Jeff Hopkins – the founder of the Pacific school of Innovation and Inquiry. I am so excited to hear about his approach to education and the revolutionary method of teaching his school facilitates. It sounds like such an incredibly rich community of both teachers and learners. The journey towards inquiry is much more organic and allows a seamless type of multi modality. I love the idea of teachers collaborating together, each learning from one another and from their students. This holistic, cross-curricular pedagogy seems much more intuitive and I would imagine elicits stronger intrinsic motivation. I hope his educational model is adapted by more districts as we continue to become aware of the benefits of self-directed learning and student led projects.
Through my observations at Lamrbick Park, I’ve been excited to see a student led approach taken by one of the teachers. His classroom in fairly informal in the traditional sense. Rather than tell the students what to do, he brainstorms ideas and supplies a list of potential projects. The kids are then able to pick assignments they are interested in. This gives the students a sense of autonomy in their learning and allows them to feel like they are in charge of their classroom time. The teacher also encourages students to pursue any ideas they have. When students finish a project, they each fill out a self-assessment. I like the idea of empowering students, to steer their own learning path and also to reflect/assess on how well they did. Assessment is something I have been thinking more about recently. In our seminar class we have been learning about rubric design and the pros/cons of formative and summative assessment. I see advantages to both and think incorporating a combination of the two may prove to be the most affective way to assess learning.
It dawned on me today that I am finally starting to get into the flow of blogging. I realized that it happened instinctually after our Friday POD meeting. I’m beginning to find my stride in this class and it feels much more natural than it did at the start of term. Dare I say, I’ve even begun to *enjoy* the time to stop and reflect on my week !? I have even noticed how the aspect of keeping a written record of my weeks events is encoding the material differently in my brain.
