Have you ever heard of Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry in Victoria, BC? Me neither, at least not up until a few weeks ago.

We were introduced to a documentary called Most Likely to Succeed – based on a High Tech High based in California – another school I had not heard of, but these two schools are similar in that they do not follow provincial outlined curriculum and is more based on student led learning. It is an interesting concept for someone who grew up in standardized education system over 30 years ago.

We met with founder, Jeff Hopskins, and were able to listen to his story and about the school and bring our questions to him. I think my bigger take away was that within the curriculum, we as teachers will have autonomy of how we want to teach- but we also need to be transparent on how we want to teach.

Since last term’s art exploration course, I have been teasing out the idea of having an art-based classroom, a classroom where art can be part of the learning process – for example, in my last assignment for math we had to create a lesson based on grade and curriculum – I chose gr 2/3 and patterns – with this idea I did a lesson that introduced patterns based on cultures and their history and from there students could create their own patterns with the use of graph paper that eventually transferred to Perler beads – more commonly known as melty beads.

I also designed a literacy and science-based lesson that had students look at astrology and their stories and create a water resist painting with an astrological body and write it’s accompanying story with it.

I am enjoying the idea of trying this during practicum, to see if it could really work. I also want to try to include the input of the students as much as possible so that they are engaged in their learning. I think this may take some pressure off me to come up with all the projects, but I can also see how trying to bring art into each subject can also create more work for me. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained…