At the beginning of this week’s lecture, we discussed standout points from Most Likely To Succeed (2015), a documentary covering the pedagogical structure of High Tech High, a high school in San Diego, California. A major component of this school’s innovative program enables its students to drive their own learning, pursuing inquiry projects to later be showcased and shared with community and family members at the end of the year. The positivity surrounding this unique curriculum structure brings forth a lot of considerations concerning BC’s (and most of North America’s) more conventional education models – are they successful?

Do we need to reimagine education? In a sense, I think education should be continually reimagined. Our world is constantly changing locally and globally, which means that our curriculums should also. I believe it is a teachers’ responsibility to establish growth mindset concerning all aspects of their work. This means we should be assessing and evaluating our students’ success on a semester to semester, year to year basis. In terms of the documentary, I think that our current BC curriculum could afford to be more inquiry-based. I think many students would find the transition from high school to university less stressful, given the chance to pursue individual projects with the close support of classmates and teachers at the high school level.

What obstacles to educators face when they try to change pedagogy? That being said, change often requires overcoming barriers. Something I noticed when the curriculum shifted away from standardized testing and letter grades ten years ago was a lot of pushback from teachers, students, and even parents. I think province-wide change is significant. Many parents are very invested in their teens’ school success, and had a difficult time accepting a new grading system. Many teachers struggled with implementing new numeracy and literacy assessments. It brought forth more work, time, and communication with parents and students, which can be challenging.

What concerns you and/or excites you about this approach? Along the same lines of the innovative approach at High Tech High, Jeff Hopkins’ Ted Talk describes a new approach to learning as ‘knowing rather than knowing about’. This perspective of teaching and learning excites me because I think that every teen holds incredible potential to be passionate about something, with a desire to fully know and comprehend it. What motivates me is when I see teachers (or even professors, at the university level), enabling students to pursue their passions. The teachers who provided an opportunity for me to do so left significant impacts on my life.

To wrap up this week’s reflection, the following questions persist for me. How can we construct a classroom that promotes inquiry based learning that encourage our students to truly know things while still covering content outlined by the BC curriculum? In what ways does the BC curriculum still need to shift? What does ‘successful’ pedagogy truly look like and will we ever attain it? Or simply – must we be open and excited about constant growth and change.