The 13 current Edmonton and area
The website says “Children learn best by doing. The
Inquiring Minds partnership offers teachers an opportunity to move their
classroom to a community site for a week of hands on, multi-sensory learning.
Student learning is enhanced by meeting curriculum expectations through
meaningful connections to the real world.” The website also uses the
descriptive phrase “week-long, site-based, inquiry programming”.
Those ideas work together to create the essence of this approach. It’s not
really a whole new world. It’s just the fascinating world that can be discovered
at a site. Inquiring Minds banded together because they share this learning
idea. It is an organic connection. Each site has its own individual funding and administrative
organization. The diverse coordinators come together monthly to share ideas related
to this approach, but there is no overall business unit or funding model in Inquiring Minds.
Like the learning ideas they champion, each site handles those things in its
own unique way. Inside the larger organization that is home to each program,
the magic of the site and pride in the learning it facilitates help create meaningful
connections to the real world.
If you want to raise the “hackles” of an Inquiring Minds
program coordinator use the words “field trip” to describe your understanding of
their program. While there are many places (some Inquiring Minds physical locations also
welcome teachers and students to other programs that might be called field trips)
providing very focused experiences for anything from an hour to a full day, the
approach of Inquiring Minds is to slow down and open up the multi-facilitated
learning available at that physical space. Site-based means to “be” at a site
and introduce as many different curriculum connections as might to be possible
in a week’s worth of full days.
Week-long has recently morphed to 5 days with the education
school days (instruction days) calendar leaving fewer whole weeks. Most program
coordinators use a creative approach to provide 5 consecutive instructional
days. The point is to bring students and teachers often enough to the space to
allow time for observing, connecting and reflecting with a variety of people
and things, traverse the breadth of the space and get behind the scenes. Overcoming
first impression newness and allowing for visit-revisit connections settles sensory
stimulated brains and provides deeper learning opportunities. Inside this practice
we like to say, “Students and teachers end up owning the space”.
The big idea behind an inquiry approach in a learning rich
environment is the power of ENGAGEMENT of students; what “catches the eye”, fascinates
and creates a willingness to spend time slow looking naturally leads next to lots of questions.
With more time those questions lead to the process of seeking answers and that can lead to (with
nurture or without) connections making curriculum objectives come alive.
One of the reveals at each site is an introduction to jobs many
of us, adults included, know little about. A key component of each program is
the people who work for the larger organization. Tying curriculum to the
everyday skills and ideas of occupations can give reason or purpose to certain aspects
of learning. In Alberta we refer to these curriculum connections under the term, Career and Life Management or CALM.
All the programs hope against hope that participating teachers will use the
experience as a central part of a year long connection to learning. Facilitators offer educators
ways and support to divide the school year into 3 parts: 1. before we go, 2. while we are
there and 3. what we can do with what we learned.
And all Inquiring Minds sites champion the use of a
journal as a primary research and reflecting tool.
The next 13 posts will be about individual sites. Our current “interesting
times” gave me the opportunity to phone chat with a variety
of program coordinators. There is nothing like a personal perspective to see a whole
new world.
Hang on to the fringes and tassels. Here we go.
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