We will soon share all of the case studies on our website (and a reminder to submit these to Donna by June 30^th). But to give you a small taste of the caliber of work happening around the province, take a look at the learning around Innovation and Inquiry that took place in SD 68 Nanaimo Ladysmith over the past year. 

Thanks to Linda Baldwin – SD 68’s District Innovation and Inquiry Coordinator (how cool is that title!) – for collating the stories shared at the district’s Celebration on May 31^st and putting together this slideshow capturing the school inquiries that were shared at the Celebration.  Fairview Community School chose to create video case studies this year (also cool!). 

Linda also shared learning from the first year of the district’s Innovation and Inquiry Lead Teacher Initiative, which she coordinated on behalf of the district. This team of lead teachers engaged in a system level inquiry, coming together several times over the course of the school year, and working specifically at building capacity with collaborative inquiry as a professional learning strategy and supporting instructional leadership at the school level. This slideshow shares contributions from the Innovation and Inquiry Lead Teachers, with each providing one slide that was representative of one highlight (project, inquiry, collaboration) of their work from the school year. This truly is an innovation approach and model for building leadership and capacity. Do you think it could work in your school district? Something to consider for next year!

More stories to come soon. Enjoy the last week of school everyone!

Take a few minutes to check out a few and see how schools and districts focused on improving teaching and learning for all students. We’re always amazed at the caliber of professional learning being engaged through the Spiral of Inquiry, but this past year is particularly impressive given 2014/2015 started off with job action in BC. When you see what was done, how much was accomplished, and particularly the commitment from teams to further their learning into the future, I think you’ll agree that we have some of the best educators in the world working right here in BC!

We’ve also noted previously that with help from Network leader Angela Stott, we’ve captured ideas around inquiry through short videos filmed at the last Network Symposium.  These videos are organized by themes, such as Impact on Aboriginal Education (see below), Authentic Use of the Spiral and Building Curiosity. All videos are posted here.

As the school year draws to a close, we welcome Network schools to continue to share their learning over the past year through submitting case studies. Case studies are rich sources of data, capturing both the process of inquiry with regard to a school’s particular focus for improvement, as well as the learning and observations obtained throughout the journey. The templates for submitting NOII Case Studies and AESN Case Studies are now available on the website. In completing your case study, please keep the headings and remove the descriptors for each section. Please use Calibri 12 for the font.  This will simplify the editing process and make our lives a lot easier!

We’d like to get all the case studies in by the end of July so that we can spend some time in August reviewing them and posting them on the website. Then in the fall, we will send out the grants to all the 2014-2015 schools. We are very grateful to the Irving K Barber Learning Centre at UBC for supporting the AESN work on transitions, the BCPVPA for publishing Spirals of Inquiry, and the Ministry of Education for providing funding that will allow us to continue to provide grants to schools that complete their case studies. We know how important it is to acknowledge the contributions you are making and we will continue to find ways to say thank you for all that you do. 

Questions about submitting your case study? Please contact us: dweaving@dccnet.com