The focus of the session was "Inquiry learning" and more specifically, being able to create "Essential Questions" that should be guiding our units in the subjects we teach. He told us there would be no breaks and after a blisteringly quick and jam packed two hours, we were done. For me, I was sitting next to my teaching partner and this was a great way to be able to bounce ideas off of each other for what are going to be our upcoming units in social studies and science (where we will both be trying to implement what we learned today).
The big take away for me, (other than "inquiry learning" is something that we should all be doing in our teaching practice these days anyway, and that it seems to fit nicely with what will be coming done the pipe in terms of the next generation of standards coming with the changes to the BC curriculum, is that we need to be asking students questions that are "UNGOOGLEABLE". This is because we have shifted from needing to know the facts (we can and will often now have those provided to us) to know how to solve problems and use the tools to do so. I think the hardest part is that having been taught myself in the old paradigm, it will take a lot of thinking about what we are doing (reflection) and continued time with professional development as support to allow this to happen naturally in our day to day teaching, because instinctually we tend to teach the way we were taught. It's just natural. I'm looking forward to the challenge, because I know that this will be much more compelling for the students.
I think this whole concept goes with this image nicely:
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