Tag Archives: Inquiry Hub

Chat GPT chose us

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A couple Fridays ago the school got a call from a guy with an Australian accent. He said he was a former school principal who now does consulting promoting progressive and innovative practices in schools. He said he knew it was short notice but he was in town and could he visit our school. I had time at the end of the day and invited him to visit. He Uber’ed in from Vancouver and after a quick chat we had a tour, talked to a couple teachers, and a few students.

He got to see the tail end of a presentation and hear some of the feedback our students gave. Then we went back to my office for a chat. So I asked him, how did you choose Inquiry Hub as a school to visit? He said that he has been working with AI recently and he had put all the factors he looks for in progressive schools, and asked Chat GPT which school he should visit. Inquiry Hub came up.

I find it fascinating that we were found this way. A chance encounter created by an LLM.

New student day

Today our Grade 9 students will lead us as we welcome next year’s new students to spend the day with us. Being a school that doesn’t have a catchment, we get only 1-3 students from each middle school, and a few from a neighbouring homeschool program. So come September students don’t really know anyone.

This day relieves the anxiety of the first day of September. It introduces new students to our small community and shows them how welcoming our student body is.

They will learn about us and our routines, and equally as important, they will meet their classmates. I love seeing students excited in September to reconnect with students they met today. Excitement rises, anxiety lowers, and it helps us get the year started right.

It’s a very busy day with a PAC pot luck and meeting to end the day, but it is worth it to help pull our community together.

Passion Projects

For the second day in a row I got to watch student IDS – Independent Directed Study – final presentations. The last couple were from a Grade 11 on ‘Coding a Cookbook’ and a grade 12 on ‘Creating a Music Album’.

I’m so glad we recorded these. Both the depth of learning and the appreciation of the learning process were on full display. Presentations were exceptional both in design and also in delivery. This isn’t a surprise because these are skills intentionally taught at Inquiry Hub. And students do so many presentations at our school that they comfortably get in front of an audience to speak.

Still, I watch and I’m so impressed with the ability of these teenagers to be captivating presenters. And there is no better presentation to watch than an IDS, where the entire curriculum is designed by the students. Let students work on and learn about topics they are truly passionate and interested in, and they’ll very often go above and beyond expectations.

Celebrating challenges

I watched a few student presentations yesterday. Each one was excellent in their own way. But my favourite moment came when one student presenting on her Independent Directed Study put up a slide with the single word, ‘Challenges’ on it. She got excited and started with, “OK, I’ve been waiting to share this with you!”

I love the way our students perceive challenges and failures. They recognize that this is part of the learning journey. They celebrate the discoveries they make and the effort and perseverance it takes to overcome unexpected challenges along the way.

Here is a student that has done an amazing project, with a great outcome, and she can’t wait to share her challenges that lead to success. This happens because we embed the expectation that students will find challenges along the way. We expect them to share those challenges as part of their learning journey. As a result, the challenges become a big part of the learning, they become the focal point of where real learning begins.

An ‘A’ student that breezes through problems as if they were not problems doesn’t learn as much as another student who stumbled along the way and got to the same results. The journey is less memorable, less rewarding. It’s overcoming challenges that make a learning experience valuable, and seeing our students celebrate the challenges they met on there learning journey is extremely rewarding.

A good reminder

This time of year can feel like a grind. So much to do, so little time. So when we get a little reminder of why we do what we do, it’s special, and uplifting. Tonight is our senior spring formal and the evening will be one of those reminders. Seeing our now grown up students all dressed up, and remembering their younger selves when they first arrived at the school, will be a reminder of the growth and development we’ve supported in these young adults.

Yesterday we had another little reminder. A card and gifts for the staff from the parents of a grade 12 student. What makes this card extra special is that it comes from a prof in teacher education. Here is the letter, a wonderful battery charge as we head into the final few weeks of school.

Dear IHub Faculty and Staff,

Thank you for an amazing four years! We could not have asked for a better or more supportive learning environment for [student name]. We are so grateful for all you do to provide engaging apportunities for students that connects them with their passions and gifts.

Thank you for supporting [student name] unconditionally and for all your patience and flexibility. You are the gold standard of what education should be. We raise a glass to you all and honour all of your contributions to the lives of the students in the graduating class of 2025!

Passion for learning

I met two young, gifted students yesterday, interested in attending our school next year. It’s fascinating to meet 13 year old kids who aren’t just good students but passionate learners. Kids who see school as places to connect with friends and get exposed to ideas that they wouldn’t get exposed to if they stayed home. Kids who want to go to school because it’s more interesting than staying home.

It excites me to think that these kids will come to our school and part of their day will be dedicated to them perusing passion projects that they design. They aren’t just going to be taking notes, do practice questions from a textbook, or comple ‘cookie cutter’ styles projects where most of the final products look the same.

I think some kids learn despite the system they are in. These kids I met yesterday would be successful no matter what school they attend. But they deserve an opportunity to attend a school where they get to shine… Where they get to try something that can fully engage their passion for learning. Even where they can try something too big and fail, but learn that this too is a learning experience.

When I see kids with a passion for learning, I see kids that should have some autonomy over their day at school. They want to learn, let them discover, explore, and innovate. Let them follow their passions and interests. Let them own some of their own learning.

Keep the passion for learning alive.

Alumni reunion

Yesterday over 70 former grads came to visit our little school that only had its first official graduation 8 years ago. We originally thought about half that many would be able to join us.

I can’t express how wonderful it was to connect with former students, to see what they are up to now, and to have an opportunity to chat with them. Two students from our first grad are now married and brought their baby. Several more are married or engaged. Many are still in school. Some are working for big companies, some following their artistic passions, and of course a few are still finding their way in the world.

It was a a very special event and it made me appreciate what a wonderful community we have created. I couldn’t be luckier, being able to stay at Inquiry Hub since its inception in 2012.

Passion Project

At Inquiry Hub we don’t just have genius hour where students spend an hour a week on a project. Instead we have a full for-credit course that students take to follow their learning passions and interests. Yesterday I got to see a couple progress presentations, where students shared where they are on their current learning journey.

I’m always surprised by the diversity of questions students choose to tackle. Students find both creative topics and also creative ways to express their learning. But what I enjoy most is seeing the enthusiasm with which they go about learning. Having a specific course that lets students pursue their interests and actually get credit for it, rather than it be something extra that they do, adds an element of purpose to the project.

Imagine being an inquisitive student who spends their entire day learning what is on someone else’s agenda. Go to class, get the work for that specific subject, then go to the next class and repeat. Then lunch, then repeat for two more courses. The courses could be engaging, the teachers can be fantastic, but the choice of what to study is completely predetermined.

I think genius hour is great when there isn’t a full inquiry course to take. So are assignments where students have choice to make the assignment follow their interests. But maybe students should have inquiry/passion project time every week, at every grade… Scaffolded more in the younger years, but provide to every kid, every week.

Who owns the learning in a school? Who should own it? If you think students should at least partially own their own learning, then at some point in the school day or school week, they should be allotted time to do so. School should be a place where students have a say in what they get to learn.

Full appreciation

Last night Inquiry Hub Secondary had our open house to introduce our school to potential new students and their parents. It’s a bit of a challenge being a very small program that requires students to decide not to go to their closer, local high school and commute to another school away from their friends. But then we run an event like this and we hear speeches from our Grade 12’s, who share how rich their experience has been, and I realize why kids come here.

For me it is the student participation on a night like this that charges my battery. They come to share their interests, their inquiries, their time and labour, to showcase our school… their school.

It makes me feel lucky to be their principal; to be part of this community; to work with an amazing staff. An event like last night’s open house leaves me in full appreciation of the job I have, and the work that our team does to support students, who are also our amazing school ambassadors.

When students lead

We have a Professional Development Day today and so we held our Remembrance Day Assembly yesterday. It was completely organized by our student leadership club. My only contribution was a suggested theme, and it was shared because I was asked. Beyond that the agenda, setup, sound, performances, and every word spoken was done by students.

The main organizer, in Grade 12, is an exceptional writer, and I could hear his voice, his excellent vocabulary, weaved through the presentations. But he didn’t speak, he sat with the team working on the sound system.

I didn’t get to hear the rehearsal like I’d hoped, but one of our Grade 10’s assured me that it went really well. This was obvious in the assembly, because everything went smoothly. The performers were mostly from Grade 10’s, all future leaders capable of taking on running the event next year.

There’s a difference between student leaders who help a teacher run an event, and student leaders who take full responsibility for an event. There is an authenticity that comes with full control. Of course the students need to be ready for this. Putting them fully in charge but unprepared is not a recipe for success, but there is another side to this.

What if things go wrong? Well, there are different kinds of going wrong. If a student is playing an instrument and misses a note, that’s not a big deal. If a student says something inappropriate in a formal assembly, or obviously doesn’t take the event seriously, that’s different. If someone forgets a line, that’s different than if the event feels ad hoc and unplanned.

When students are ready, they need to be provided with authentic opportunities to lead. And when they step and truly lead, it’s impressive to see what they can do. One of the highlights for me, a thing that really made me feel impressed, was that the main organizer did the same thing we did. He stepped back, work done before the event even started, and he let the younger students MC, he let his team run the show. He distributed the leadership the same way it was distributed to him.