The field trip to Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry proved very illuminating. I really appreciated Jeff Hopkin’s talk about his experience running PSII and the inquiry-based approach the school adopts. I feel it’s unfortunate that there aren’t too many schools at the moment adopting PSII’s approach. I have since looked into ARC middle school and would greatly like to have my practicum at either ARC or PSII. It was very endearing to have one of the students come in and address some of our questions and talk about her experience transitioning from a public school system. While I can appreciate the hurdles inherent in having the public school system adopt a new learning model – especially while figuring out how to assess the new competencies – I hope that the inquiry based approach towards education picks up some traction in the near future. I picked up the book “Dive Into Inquiry” by Trevor MacKenzie upon Jeff’s recommendations and look forward to seeing how I might incorporate PSII’s approach into my future teaching practice.