If you can’t already tell from my lack of inquiry posts I have been struggling with implementing inquiry into my own learning. Inquiry based learning is something I find incredibly interesting but is very different from way I have learned in the past. I feel like today was a breakthrough for me I feel like inquiry is something I can explor and not fear after seeing the Psii school and understanding a real world application of inquiry at a real school. For me, I am so used to doing what a teacher tells me to do and working in a box and not thinking for myself about what I want to learn. I also felt like I had a plan and a idea of what I wanted to do but when it came to outing my idea into action I realized it was unrealistic because of the course load I already have. After my first post I soon realized I was not able to take on a huge project so different from the rest of my courses like what I was planning on doing. I wasn’t able to get all the supplies I wanted to do one massive painting as most of my old equipment was back home. Although I was still working on finishing smaller paintings and I was doing art at home for myself I felt like it wasn’t connected enough to what I had planned for my inquiry so I didn’t want to track or post about it. I also felt like I couldn’t change it because my first post set that idea in stone which I learned today is not what this inquiry project is about. By writing about my struggles with this project I am learning what not to do going forward and gaining a better understanding of how inquiry based learning works. Becoming more knowledgeable about how to be a learner and working through inquiry I feel like I will be better able to teach lessons based around inquiry learning to my future students.
Category: Free Inquiry
Experience at PSII
After visiting the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry I feel like I have grasped a better understanding of inquiry and how it works. I finally realized that it is normal to face a lot of struggles when first investigating inquiry. Shifting one’s mindset is not an easy thing to do and at PSII I began to feel more confident about being able to learn through an inquiry-based process when I started coming up with more questions.
I found a lot of the structures they used for learning to be highly interesting. For instance, the different steps for inquiry and how it works I wouldn’t have thought could have fit in a structure. I thought inquiry was nonconstructive and free-flowing which isn’t entirely realistic because it is something that needs to start more guided and slowly become free inquiry.
Free Inquiry Subject
I have always been a very creative and expressive person. Like most kids, I explored art in school and had a large collection of abstract finger paintings and dented paper mache masterpieces. it wasn’t until high school that I was able to discover my love of art and realize my artistic abilities, I signed up to take an activism class thinking it would be more centered around social justice when instead we were interviewing refugees in our community and creating a massive representation of their story in the form of a painting that we then would sell having the proceeds go to a refugee student in the community. During these 4 months, I fell in love with painting. I had created something large with meaning and put my heart into every stroke. After that experience, I started painting at home, I never had the best paints or brushes but I just practiced whenever I could. I liked that I had found something I was good at and when I painted I could create anything I wanted. I was free to make dozens of mistakes or be as meticulous as I felt necessary. sometime between starting university and now my passion faded I got caught up in the papers, labs, and readings that I forgot to pursue the things I loved claiming that I just didn’t have time
Relating back to my free inquiry, I want to pursue and track my journey of re-sparking my passion for painting.
