In Friday’s class we met Trevor Mackenzie. Trevor is a local educator, author, speaker and advocate for inquiry-based learning. His “student-first” philosophy was a breath of fresh air and I found his enthusiasm really inspiring. He began his talk with us by sharing his values and encouraged us to ensure we spend time reflecting on our own values, and also our school experiences and preconceived notions of what schooling is meant to be. In my last reflection, I wondered whether the autonomy granted to BC teachers could be a disservice to students, but when framed correctly, teachers like Trevor add so much richness to the curriculum that we are lucky to have the freedom to be able to frame the required content around what the students want to learn.

The key take-aways for me were:

  • help students lift up their strengths and help them understand where their “stretches” are.
  • students are not an empty vessel. They are full of rich prior knowledge and experience.
  • give the student freedom to have agency and ownership over their own learning.
  • Always ask yourself if you are doing something that the student can be doing themselves. If so, stop! Provide guidance if needed.
    • Support in an inquiry classroom includes lesson plans on how to research. For example, he mentioned that he is going over Ebsco.com with his students.
  • deadline windows!
  • be responsive, agile, pivot based on student needs.
  • encourage talking!
  • spark curiosity!
  • build relationships through warm, calm support

I was relieved to see a framework on how to implement an inquiry based classroom and that you don’t have to dive straight into the deep-end of Free inquiry. Since my hope is to teach the intermediate grades, my approach will likely lie closer to the more structured and controlled methods of inquiry.

I already follow Trevor on Twitter and I may check out his Instagram, which he said is his favourite social media platform at the moment. I’m not very Insta-literate but I should probably attempt to figure it out. His website has some awesome free resources too! I know in the summer we have a class devoted to our own free inquiry, and I would very much like to look into these methods further. I have started by gathering some reading material mentioned in class!