Tag Archives: Inquiry Hub

Now and the Future – iHub Grad Address 2024

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I can’t describe the joy of participating in grad at Inquiry Hub. These students are amazing. Our student focused show, with performances and videos that highlight the whole school are such a community building and community honouring event. The night warmed my heart, and I teared up more than once.

Here is my grad address. I really don’t have more to say, other than it was an evening that recharged my battery. It reminded me of why I love my job.

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Now and the Future – iHub Grad Address 2024

Greetings Honoured Guests, Parents, Family Members, Teachers, and Students including our very special Grads of 2024.

In your yearbooks, I wrote this as part of my message to you:

Asking questions is key to learning and I think at Inquiry Hub we do a pretty good job of getting students to ask good questions… and then answer them. There is a lot of conversations, dialogue, and debate that happen inside our school walls, and from that students learn not just about things, but they also learn the skills to discuss and negotiate and support their ideas in meaningful ways… and sometimes even to change their minds. A growth mindset is so much better to navigate life with, compared to a fixed mindset.

In a civil society, dialogue is the one problem-solving strategy that should be sacred. To do this, free speech is essential. But right now, outside the walls of our schools, there is a culture of ‘attack the opposition’ that is very scary. We need to be resilient when hearing opposing views, and understand that, we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference. When we can’t have conversations with people that have different views, we don’t grow as a culture or as a society.

That was a message for right now. There is so much conflict and strife in the world, and it can sometimes feel a little bleak.

But here’s the thing, I’m really excited about the future our grads have before them. It’s a future that is beyond my ability to predict, but I’m going to try anyway.

Our grads understand how to see the world from multiple perspectives.

You understand the challenges but you are also solution oriented. And you are going to have tools and strategies that no other generation has had. 

Here are four predictions:

  1. You will have better AI than we can imagine. What we think is amazing now will look like child’s play in the future. I didn’t have Google growing up, I had paper encyclopedias. In a few short years the Artificial Intelligence available will look to us now like what an iPhone would be to someone living in the 1920’s. (Oh, and by the way, I did not use AI to wrote this.)
  2. You will not live in a world that has an energy crisis, or one that harvests natural resources to create energy. Energy will be almost free if not completely free.
  3. You will live longer. Longevity research is reaching a point where more and more healthy years will be added to your life faster than you age.
  4. You will retire sooner. More of your life will be filled by doing want you want to do, rather than what you need to do to work and make an income.

All this to say that while it seems like us old folks have left you a pretty messed up world, we are less than a decade away from some key turning points where you have more freedom and choice, more access to cheap energy, and more free time than we could ever have imagined as recently as when you were in Grade 9.

It’s an exciting time to think about what the future holds, and when I think about you all as creators, artists, thinkers, dreamers, and leaders, I’m excited about your generation building the future I get to grow old in. 

Inquiry Hub isn’t perfect, but it is a very special school. It is a place where our students feel they belong. A place where you get to be courageous learners and leaders, and a place that I hope you carry fond memories from. 

To the class of 2024, I can’t wait to see what the future holds for you… and for what you will do to help shape that future. Be brave, be strong, and help build a community where everyone feels they have a place, and a way to contribute. 

Thank you.

Passion Project Presentations

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I’ve had the privilege of watching a few final presentations for our IDS courses – Independent Directed Studies – at Inquiry Hub. Our students choose a topic and put 100-120 hours of work into research, design, and creation of their own courses. The topics vary considerably from making a movie to learning to suture stitches, to designing a facial recognition doorbell, to creating a tabletop role playing game based on the student’s heritage.

I love seeing the diversity of the presentations, and the passion and enthusiasm students have sharing their work. I’m so impressed by both their presentation skills and so their slides. These students could teach a thing or two about how to create a slideshow to many professional presenters I’ve seen.

That’s because they get a lot of practice designing presentations and presenting. They have to do so in groups and on their own many times a year… more than in any typical school. And they get feedback, lots and lots of feedback, from peers as well as teachers.

For these final presentations parents are also invited, and even if parents can’t make it, students still have an audience beyond just the teacher. Students can invite anyone they want to watch, and we’ve even had two of our secretaries invited because they have similar interests in the topics, one on hairdressing and another on embroidery. The community aspect of these with parents, mentors, and community members joining in is absolutely wonderful. Our assistant superintendent also joined for a couple presentations.

It’s pretty special watching these final presentations. I think that every student should get a chance to delve into an area of interest that they choose. Learning shouldn’t just be about transmitting knowledge but about knowledge construction, and what better way to do this than to have students design their own learning experience?

Content Free Learning (in a world of AI)

Yesterday, when I took a look at how it’s easier to make school work Google proof than it is to make school work AI proof, I said:

How do we bolster creativity and productivity with AND without the use of Artificial Intelligence?

This got me thinking about using AI effectively, and that led me to thinking about ‘content free’ learning. Before I go further, I’d like to define that term. By ‘content free’ I do NOT mean that there is no content. Rather, what I mean is learning regardless of content. That is to say, it doesn’t matter if it’s Math, English, Social Studies, Science, or any other subject, the learning is the same (or at least similar). So keeping with the Artificial Intelligence theme, here are some questions we can ask to promote creativity and productivity in any AI infused classroom or lesson:

“What questions should we ask ourselves before we ask AI?”
“What’s a better question to ask the AI?”
“How would you improve on this response?”
“What would your prompt be to create an image for this story?”
“How could we get to a more desired response faster?”
“What biases do you notice?”
“Who is our audience, and how do we let the AI know this?”
“How do we make these results more engaging for the audience?”
“If you had to argue against this AI, what are 3 points you or your partner would start with?”

In a Math class, solving a word problem, you could ask AI, “What are the ‘knowns and unknowns’ in the question?”

In a Social Studies class, looking at a historical event, you could ask AI, “What else was happening in the world during this event?” Or you could have it create narratives from different perspectives, before having a debate from the different perspectives.

In each of these cases, there can be discussion about the AI responses which are what students are developing and thinking about… and learning about. The subject matter can be vastly different but the students are asked to think metacognitively about the questions and tasks you give AI, or to do the same with the results an AI produces.

A great example of this is the Foundations of Inquiry courses we offer at Inquiry Hub. Student do projects on any topics of interest, and they are assessed on their learning regardless of the content.  See the chart of Curricular Competencies and Content in the course description. As described in the Goals and Rationale:

At its heart inquiry is a process of metacognition. The purpose of this course is to bring this metacognition to the forefront AS the learning and have students demonstrate their ability to identify the various forms of inquiry – across domains and disciplines and the stages of inquiry as they move through them, experience failure and stuckness at each level. Foundations of Inquiry 10 recognizes that competence in an area of study requires factual knowledge organized around conceptual frameworks to facilitate knowledge retrieval and application. Classroom activities are designed to develop understanding through in-depth study both within and outside the required curriculum.

This delves into the idea of learning and failure, which I’ve spoke a lot about before.In each of the examples above, we are asking students challenging questions. We are asking them to critically think about what we are asking AI; to think about how we can improve on AI responses; or, to think about how to use AI responses as a launching point to new questions and directions. The use of AI isn’t to ‘get to’ the answer but rather to get to a challenging place to stump students and force them to think critically about the questions and responses they get from AI.

And sometimes the activity will be too easy, other times too hard, but even those become learning opportunities… content free learning opportunities.

BIG Question Institute Webinar on Inquiry Hub

Here is the video from the BIG Question Institute Webinar teachers John Sarte, Al Soiseth, and I did on our school, Inquiry Hub Secondary. (On Vimeo)

Here is the comment I wrote on the webinar recording page on the BIG Questions Institute site.

Thanks for the opportunity to share Will, it was great to connect.
Here are a few links that we were going to share that we didn’t get to on the final slide:
http://Educators.inquiryhub.org – Created for the Cmolik award, which we lost out to Peter Liljedahl, mentioned in the webinar.

And our school YouTube page, which includes the ‘How far will you go’ student created video I mentioned.

And a couple posts I’d like to share… the ‘Teacher as Compass’ post that it turns out you prompted with a Tweet… and my ‘Learning and Failure’ post. We didn’t really get to this in the presentation, but one of the things I’m most proud about at our school is how we teach students to embrace would be failures as learning opportunities from which to grow and improve.

Thanks also to all who attended. Happy to share other resources such as our Inquiry courses.
Dave

As always, feedback appreciated, either here or on the BIG QI page.

Every learner is a hero

Yesterday Inquiry Hub teacher John Sarte and I did a webinar with Will Richardson. In it, we shared the ‘Every Learner is a Hero’ whiteboard model we’ve been developing. I realize that this was drawn over 2 years ago and yet this was the first time we shared it in full.

There is a lot here, and John and I will share more, but here are some ideas on this whiteboard that I’ve already shared:

  1. The metaphor of Teacher as Compass – Think also of ‘Teacher as Guide’.
  2. The relationship between Learning and Failure , which involves re-examining the term failure.

It’s about more than just Transforming our Classrooms…

It’s about creating a place for students to Dream, Create, and Learn… where student voice isn’t just about students presenting, but also about them helping to develop and create the learning spaces and experiences they want.

Students should be the heroes of their own learning journeys… after all it’s their learning that really matters.

 

Join our webinar this coming Wednesday

This Wednesday, Jan 17 at 4pm PST, please join us to learn about Inquiry Hub Secondary School.  I’m looking forward to connecting with Will Richardson again, I’ve followed him and been influenced by his thinking since I started blogging in 2006. When he suggested connecting for a webinar I knew that I wanted a teacher with me, and who better then my colleague John Sarte. John is a founding teacher at Inquiry Hub, and he has been truly instrumental in developing the vision of our school, and helping us create our unique learning environment. Here are the webinar details, I hope that you can join us!

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FREE WEBINAR: “Inquiry Hub: The Dream, Create, Learn School” with Dave Truss and Dr. John Sarte – Hosted by Will Richardson

Details

Join us for this important overview of a compelling school model that highlights the power of project-based learning.

Inquiry Hub is a small Coquitlam School District (BC) high school that is unique in its approach and delivery. Known as the Dream – Create – Learn school, Inquiry Hub was born out of the idea that students don’t need to spend every minute of their day siloed into individual courses, without any unstructured time. It has evolved into a community of students who work both together and individually to complete the required curriculum while also designing some of their courses and their day around inquiries and passion projects that they want to pursue.

Grade 9’s and 10’s do cross-curricular projects using SCRUM project management, collaborating to get work done efficiently and effectively, and they also take an Inquiry Course designed around developing strong presentation skills and documenting their learning journeys, doing passion projects that they design. Grade 11’s and 12’s construct year-long IDS – Independent Directed Studies courses where they delve deep into their interests.

A key component of the program is DCL time, coined after the Dream – Create – Learn motto, where students are not in a structured class, but rather have unstructured time to work on their class projects, homework and assignments, and/or on their passion projects. Central to this is creating a community of learners who are eager to help each other and who have learned that failure is part of learning. Projects can be too big, too challenging, too overwhelming, but still result in a final product or presentation that exceeds expectations.

Wednesday, Jan 17 – 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PST

RSVP now to join us for this important session with principal Dave Truss and teacher Dr. John Sarte.  (You’ll need a free membership to Will Richardson’s Big Questions Institute Community to RSVP and join us.)

Imperfectly great

Our open house last night was wonderful! Our students were amazing ambassadors for our school and really did an excellent job with their presentations.

I was discussing it with one of my teachers that did the bulk of the work supporting our students and we reflected on the presentation. My comments were that it was the the worst show we’ve done with respect to the technical side and the best show we’ve done with respect to the messaging.

The technical issues included long(ish) transitions/set up between parts of the show, a live feed failure (beyond our control), a microphone feedback pop right in the middle of a performance, as well as a few mic level issues. The thing is, these weren’t awful, they just weren’t up to our usual high standard.

When speaker Alvin Law came to our school a few years ago at the end of the show he said to me, “What kind of a school is this?” I was a bit confused by the question and he said, “I present all over the place, to big companies with massive budgets, and I’ve never had a sound crew so professional and have the sound work so well as with your kids today.”

I tell sound/tech crews that their job is to be invisible. When a microphone is too quiet, they get noticed, if a microphone pops with feedback or if there is a delay in setup, they get noticed. A good team isn’t noticed because everything works. Last night the tech issues were not awful, they just weren’t perfect. No one in the audience would point it out as disappointing, they would all recognize that this was a student run show and there were a few minor kinks.

That’s the thing about truly letting the students lead, it’s not always going to be perfect, but there is a positive vibe that is given off when students get to run the show, and ‘perfect’ is usually a less than realistic goal.

The overall presentation was really solid, in fact I think the messaging was very focused around student voice and you could hear that throughout the show. It’s funny because I can think back a few years to a show where everything went exactly as planned and the show was pretty much perfect. When I told my teacher that I thought this show was even better than the messaging of that ‘perfect’ show, he agreed and said, that show was too slick. It was polished but student voice didn’t come through.

We’ve gotten pretty good at letting students really lead. We’ve worked with perfectionists who stress about every assignment they hand in and taught them how some things need to be good enough, and helped them rethink the definition of done, while other things they do they should really make as perfect as can be.

While a big presentation to over 160 people should be as perfect as can be, when you are letting students run a show and the students who do so change every year, things won’t go perfectly every time. But the job is done. The presentation is over, and what we saw were some awesome kids, doing their best, and putting on a great show that really showed that they take pride and ownership in our school.

Last night was imperfectly great. The show was not as tight and seamless as we’ve had in the past, but it was authentically a student production. It had student voice, and I thought the messaging was the best we’ve ever shared as a school. Our students were awesome!

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Here’s a short video clip from the event.

Our Big Event

Today is our school’s annual open house. We have about 150 people that reserved seats. After 11 years we still rely on this event to get students and their parents interested in applying to attend our school. It’s amazing to me that more students don’t want the Inquiry Hub experience for high school.

I know a tiny school doesn’t meet the needs of some students who want a big high school experience. However I also know the format of the school with self-directed inquiries and way more unstructured time for working independently and in groups is ideal for so many students. I know that our students find the transition to university easy, and that they don’t only feel prepared but also thrive in post secondary environments, since they have practiced being inquisitive, self-directed learners.

Yet, without hosting this big event, after visiting our middle schools to introduce our school as a viable choice beyond their catchment high school, we would struggle with enrolment. And so tonight is a big event for our school. More than half of our students are participating in or helping to run the show. They did the majority of the planning, and they will be amazing ambassadors.

I love their enthusiasm, and it makes me proud to see our students excited to promote our school. It’s going to be a great night.

School Ambassadors

Last Friday six of our students presented to 34 middle school cohort student teachers from the University of British Columbia. They had prepared the presentation for two visiting Northwest Territories teachers a few weeks back but I didn’t get to see it. In preparing the presentation I had asked them not just to share some of the amazing inquiries they get to do at Inquiry Hub, but also ones that were challenging and did go as well as planned. I didn’t get to see their first presentation but I watched this second iteration.

Most of them didn’t just share a challenging inquiry, but their worst ones. They had me and their audience laughing as they described how things went epically wrong, or how what they thought would be a topic of great interest barely held their attention for 2 days. But more than that, each and every one of them eloquently expressed their learning from that epic failure.

Sitting behind the students, there were a few times I had the urge to say something, but I forced myself to stay quiet. Each time I had the urge, the students ended up helping each other fill in the blanks I thought were missing, and in several of those cases better than I would have… and allowing them to lead, without speaking up, gave more authenticity to the presentation experience than I could ever have contributed. I did come in at the second half of the Q&A and answered a few questions, but at that point the presentation was basically over.

I wrote this in an email to these students and their parents. I couldn’t be more proud of these young learners and leaders:

Greetings to our Inquiry Hub Ambassadors and their parents,

A few weeks back, I asked a few students to present to two educators from the North West Territories during our Pro-D Day. Today, those same school ambassadors provided school tours and presented to 34 Middle School Cohort Student Teachers from UBC. I didn’t get to see the presentation to the NWT teachers but I did get to watch today. I just want to say that it was an honour and a privilege to have these 6 wonderful students represent our school, and share their inquiries and learning experiences here at iHub. 

They represented our community, and their learning, extremely well and the student teachers were impressed, and I’d even say ‘blown away’ by their presentation. Their ability to respond to the Q&A questions the student teachers asked was also exceptional. 

I wanted to share this with them and their parents and to say on behalf of our school… Thank you!

Have a great weekend,

Dave

Authentically empowered

In a recent post. Process, product, and purpose, I shared that there are some teachers coming to learn about our self-directed, inquiry based school. And that our students will be planning and presenting to these teachers. I wanted to expand a bit on the process.

One of our teachers shared this diagram with the students to help them:

Then yesterday they pulled me into their meeting to ask a few questions, (the teacher I mentioned above was teaching or he would have joined us too). The students asked me what my vision for the presentation was.

I said I would like it to be story based. That there are two stories to tell:

1. What’s the experience of a student – both their experience in a school day, and moving from Grade 9 to Grade 12.

2. What is their story? How can they share their personal stories of doing progressively more challenging inquiries?

I also made sure to ask questions about how they would do this and not just make suggestions. My talk with them was a discussion not a one-way sharing. They invited me to the conversation. My final suggestion was that I knew what they were planning was going to answer all the questions the educators asked in advance… So rather than addressing those questions directly, which would disrupt the flow of their narrative, they should end the presentation with a slide of their questions and ask if they missed anything or needed to answer any of them with more depth. They liked this idea as a way to start off their Q&A at the end.

That’s all the direction they got. I was in the room with them for about 15-20 minutes. They will create the presentation and they will want to show it to us before presenting. We won’t have to ask them to see it, they will ask us for feedback and input. That’s part of the process they’ve learned. Further to this, there are 6 of them and we didn’t pick a leader, we didn’t tell them how to organize themselves or the presentation. I did mention that the presentation should be cohesive and not look like 6 different presentations, but I gave no examples of what I meant by this. They didn’t ask, they understood.

If these were a group of Grade 9’s & 10’s we would have scaffolded this a bit more, but these four Grade 11’s and two Grade 12’s are now seasoned presenters. At least one of them will inject some humour into the conversation, any one of could will ‘wow’ the guests with the depth of their inquires, all of them will be incredible ambassadors.

And one final note: none of them are doing this for extra credit. All 6 of them are coming in on a professional development day when all their peers are off school, and they are doing this voluntarily. Why? Because we asked. Because they get to design it, and because they know they go to a pretty unique school and they want to share their story. If they didn’t get the chance to be authentically empowered in this way, it would have been unlikely that the first 6 students I asked all agreed to volunteer. They are six awesome ambassadors, sharing their stories, in their own way, and still meeting the goals of the presentation.

Our guests are going to have a great experience learning about our school from our students, while we will be in a room next door doing our own professional development.