October 19th -- 3rd annual PSC “leadership” retreat at the Purden Centre…

This PD model takes the best of Edcamp (collaboration among teachers around shared inquiries) and the worst of public education (frantically trying to sort out and mitigate the impact of the factory system) and shakes them together in a martini mixer of fire, knife-throwing, conversation, grilled foodstuffs, mutual accountability, starry-eyed anarchism, and critical analysis of current events and pressing issues.

Each participant brings one or more questions to discuss. We use a modified Socratic Fire Circle to debate and deconstruct the inquiries and inquirists at the same time.

So far, this year’s questions include:

1. What would it take to pull off a Gr. 12 multi-school student trip to Vimy Ridge in 2017  for the 100 yr anniversary?

2. How should enriched SS9/SS10 and History 12 respond to demographic changes and no provincial exam?

3. How can we unravel and guide a better use of online resources without falling into ineffective patterns?

4. What would a savvy, proactive response to BC grad changes would look like — e.g. assessment of core competencies

5. How could blended learning be used to combine courses and allow some authentic form of personalized learning?

6. What are the pros and cons of PLNs and PD on Twitter?