My Personal Inquiry

Lately I’ve been inquiring into how to lead our annual Programme of Inquiry (POI) review, where we take a look at our units of inquiry, and the POI as a whole, to evaluate their effectiveness and make improvements for next year. At my previous school, I’ve taken part in leading our POI review for the last 3 years, and it’s gone well, but I’ve been wondering about how I can structure it for my current teachers, who are new to PYP. I want it to be meaningful and engaging, rather than something they feel like they have to do because the IB says we have to do it.

In the past week, I’ve been in the tuning in stage of inquiry, actively thinking about how to do it, asking myself questions, and gathering resources. Today, I ended up working late on some other stuff for work. Despite being at work for 12 hours, I was motivated to delve more into my personal inquiry into the POI review. I printed off a few of the articles I had found earlier on the topic (I like reading hard copies when researching), and headed over to The Montrose for some dinner and a change of scenery. I set up shop at my usual table in the back, where I can be alone, spread out, and get work done. Diving right in, I began the process of finding out and sorting out, as I took copious notes from my readings, as well as jotted down things I knew I wanted to include in this year’s review.

Anyone who knows anything about inquiry knows that it leads to motivation. I continued to work for hours, without stopping. Usually when I’m working on something, I get off topic, take breaks, get distracted, etc., but not tonight. I was so energized by the planning and work I was doing, that I couldn’t stop.

After I gathered notes on the POI review, my mind drifted to teacher orientation planning. This is another topic that’s been floating around in my head lately. Like the POI review, I want it to be engaging and purposeful for my teachers. I want them to walk away feeling prepared for the year ahead, motivated to learn more about PYP and inquiry teaching, and equipped with a toolkit of teaching strategies that they can implement in their classrooms. To this end, I began making more and more lists, gathering strategies for orientation and the big ideas I wanted to be sure and include in this year’s orientation. Before I knew it, it was 11:00pm, and even though it was late, I didn’t want to stop working! Obviously I did, because I’d be a zombie tomorrow if I didn’t. I feel good about the work I did today, and am motivated to continue this process in the coming days. After I finish sorting out, I’ll go further and begin planning how I’d like to approach both the POI review and the teacher orientation. Can’t wait to see it all put together, and then in action with the teachers!