PSII is the Pacific of Innovation and Inquiry located here in Victoria. It is a 9-12 highschool made up of around 95 students and 7 adults ranging from support, teacher and principle. The absolutely fascinating thing about this school is that it is inquiry based. The students get to essentially choose their own learning path, and learn about things they are curious or passionate about while also checking off the competencies needed to graduate.

I really like the unstructured flow of the grades because if you are the agee of a grade 9 student that does not limit the content you are allowed to learn, it just means you have a but more necessary content to cover before you graduate compared to a grade 11 student. It is also very nice that they allow you to continue studies from a particular inquiry for more than one year to continue to build your knowledge and final grade.

Inquiry did not make too much sense to me before this visit and I was wondering how the students go about self guiding through their studies and thankfully there is this wonderful Flowchart

They break inquiry down into 5 steps: Starting, deepening, refining, planning, learning. And the school uses online resources such as trello to help students track their progress for each inquiry and show the teachers what they are working on.

This school is so interesting because you wonder how students can exceed if they are not doing the exact provincial curriculum. But what is the curriculum really teaching the students about their own lives, and this is where inquiry wins, because students become learners of the world around them and that helps put them on the path to exceed in life