This week Trevor Mckenzie talked to us. While I had already bought into the Inquiry model this was the first time it really clicked. We talked through how our learning experience will inform our teaching experience. Spoiler alert, it really affected the way I see myself teaching. And while I see that as mostly a good thing, he did remind us to be wary of our biases that are created through our experiences as learners. Well, he said not to just be wary, but to be interrogative of our practice. He really does seem like someone who actively practices his growth mindset. And that reflects on the way he styles his pedagogy.

One of the questions he told us to ponder was, “am I doing something for my students that they should be doing themselves?” and that’s going to stick with me. Task delegation is one of my weak points as teamwork so I am sure that, if I am not careful, that could inform my teaching practice.

Additionally, a lot of what Trevor said just made sense. The idea of negotiables and non-negotiables being a part of how we design the term for our students really clicked.

He uses this image of a pool as a metaphor for his inquiry model,

And while it seems like a linear progression, what he insisted was that learners can go back and forth between stages. From my understanding, a lot of what Trevor is saying is to give as much agency as you can to the students to help them grow. However, another Trevor quote is ” The depth of agency does not equate to the depth of learning”. Which, again, makes sense, we want to give our learners the best opportunities to grow not arbitrarily give them free reign or structure because we think it’s the best methodology.

This leads to what strikes me as the foundation of good inquiry-based learning. Building relationships with your learners. You must know your students to know what’s best for their learning. One of the techniques he shared with us was for having the students set a personalized competency goal with a bitmoji sticker to track their progress.

Another other thing Trevor touched on was the subjectivity of marking. A statistic he gave us was there can be +/- 10% difference in assessment between two teachers

All in all, the information was accessible, he seemed genuine, and I really appreciated the sweet moment he had Professor brown.

10/10 Will buy his book.

Cheers,

R