No classrooms necessary
June 26, 2024
Early-career teacher Aeryn Bannister advocates for unstructured K-12 learning where failure is planned, and students follow their curiosities rather than a set-subject curriculum.Aeryn Bannister (they/them) is an educator and a teacher candidate in the Bachelor of Education - Secondary Curriculum Post-Degree Professional Program (PDPP) at UVic. They’re set to graduate in December 2024 and are currently on practicum at Artemis Place in Victoria. Aeryn’s core teachable subjects will be physics and math; they have an undergraduate degree in astronomy and physics from UVic and a master’s in medical physics from the University of Virginia.
Aeryn was already interested in space and astronomy as a child, and this passion continued to bloom as they grew into a young adult. When Aeryn was going into grade seven, their family relocated to Victoria from Washington State. The first friend they made in grade seven is now their wife, and the couple have a two-year-old child together. “We started dating just before high school and we’ve been together ever since.”
During high school, Aeryn made the decision to pursue an astrophysics degree but landed on medical physics rather than astronomy. Medical physics is the application of complex physics to medicine, like diagnostics (MRI, ultrasound, x-ray) and radiation treatments. “I have fairly severe ADHD and realized I didn’t want to do a desk job in front of a computer. I went into medical physics because you’re working more directly with patients and there is an education component.”
Aeryn has always gravitated toward education; they worked for Science Venture during high school and volunteered at the Centre of the Universe observatory during their undergraduate studies. After the pandemic derailed plans to pursue a doctorate in medical physics, Aeryn decided to try teaching under an independent license at the Pacific School of Innovation and Inquiry (PSII).
Inquiry-led learning
At PSII, there are no specific classes and no set curriculum. Instead, students co-create their own learning pathways built on their personal curiosities. Teachers are co-creators, providing guiding prompts and opportunities for learners to connect with the core BC curriculum. Learners are encouraged to develop real projects rather than hypothetical ones and are encouraged to access the world outside of school for mentorship and to contribute to society. As they reach the end of their time at PSII, teachers speak with learners about their goals and the BC graduation requirements. Together, they look back at what the learner has covered and determine if any gaps remain. If the learner wants to attend a specific program, they can plan to ensure they will meet that program’s entrance requirements.
Artemis Place functions similarly. It is a small independent secondary school with about 50 students, most of whom have resisted conventional high school programs and require an intentional community to find support and success. For young parents, there is an on-site child-care centre. The school integrates education, counseling and life-skills in an alternative school setting. There are several rooms with a variety of seating types and areas, a large kitchen and a sprawling outdoor vegetable garden. These spaces provide interesting and engaging opportunities for learners to exist and explore.
Teachers in these environments don’t deliver traditional lessons but instead observe learners and look for natural branching points from their inquiries. “We've had learners do trigonometry through building an electric guitar and looking at signal analysis, or science through writing narrative story.” Aeryn says the students have an improved sense of ownership, excitement and initiative when they get to decide how to approach their learning.
Competency-based assessment
PSII worked with UVic graduate student Andrew MacLean to develop a tool called Comtinuum, a free, open-source learning management system built on competencies. Student assessments are made within a matrix, with competencies making up the rows and contexts making up the columns. Teachers record pieces of evidence on the matrix as students demonstrate competencies and a visual mosaic develops, tracking the student’s progress. A parent or teacher receiving a report card in this format would be able to see at a glance where the student’s strengths and weaknesses are.Aeryn says that despite significant research in favour of inquiry practice, a fundamental barrier is that it can’t be done halfway. “Without changing the system at a structural level with proper supports, all that load ends up falling on teachers, so I understand the trepidation that some have. It's a fundamentally different model than most teachers are trained for.”
Inquiry project: safe to fail
Students in the UVic Teacher Education program take a course called Link2Practice which includes a self-guided inquiry project. Aeryn’s project centered around the idea of failure as a fundamental part of learning, something they say is disincentivized by the mainstream western education system. When only the final product is graded, there’s very little opportunity for students to change course or fix things if they fail. This creates pressure on learners to get good grades, resulting in perfectionism, which leads to paralysis if they don’t think something can be done perfectly. “If you’re confident you can do something perfectly, then what are you learning by doing it?”
“Traditional assessment practices are designed to produce a plateau of skill and a crippling anxiety around being perceived as having failed in any way. We don't capture any of the learning that happens on the way to the final product, which is what matters the most.”
For their inquiry project, Aeryn conducted interviews with learners and instructors and asked them to reflect on past failures or mistakes in their lives. Respondents overwhelmingly shared stories of embarrassment, rumination and self-blame. “It was clear that we have lots of opportunity to mull over our mistakes and focus on what we should have done differently.”
Aeryn says instead it can be useful for educators to view failure as a competency to be developed rather than something to be avoided. In a supported environment, students can practice and develop important life skills like the ability to recognize when things aren’t going well, take stock, look for alternate paths, demonstrate resilience in that process and find value in what they have done.
“To do something well, you need to be willing to fail. Ninety percent of a scientist’s hypotheses will not pan out. Most of an artist’s sketches will not become paintings. The practice of failure is integral to many different fields, yet we don’t give learners a chance to build those skills.”
What's next
This summer, Aeryn is participating in the Indigenous Education Summer Institute at UVic. In the fall, they will take on a second practicum at a different school. They’re set to complete their program in December 2024 and are planning to continue teaching after graduation. They encourage other teachers to reflect on the competency model and check out Comtinuum, especially to try setting up their own classrooms using the Comtinuum alpha tool.
“As long as we’re still doing content-based assessment, we’ll have the same limitations and frustrations. Instead, we need to look at the core competencies we want students to build before they finish high school.”