Today, my cohort and I were lucky enough to have the chance to speak to Rebecca Bathurst, a kindergarten teacher at George Jay Elementary School. I was very excited and have been looking forward to meeting Rebecca, as in our Literacy and Language Class last semester, our professor mentioned and referred to Rebecca’s work quite often. She also gave us her Instagram name; therefore, we could follow along with the work she does in her classroom. I have truly been inspired and have been following Rebecca’s work for a few months now. As we attended George Jay Elementary School and were able to observe a variety of inquiry projects the kindergarteners were working on. As I arrived early I got the chance to talk to Rebecca about her journey through the Elementary Education program at UVIC. She mentioned that after graduating with her masters, she was a part of the EXPLORE program, where she was able to travel and work and find what she was most passionate about as a teacher and what she wanted to bring into her classroom. Rebecca spoke to us about her experiences as a teacher and focused on Inquiry based learning and what it means to have an inquiry mindset. Rebecca discussed the different types of inquiry such as: structured, controlled, guided and free inquiry. She explained and gave several examples of how to do each of these. I have never been so truly inspired. Throughout Rebecca’s talk she stressed the importance of beginning a lesson with a question, therefore you are guiding and allowing children to think of three specific things; what we see, what we know, and what we wonder. Rebecca also mentioned the importance of provocations and I totally agree with her about how this can create and inspire curiosity for our learners. All in all, she pursued us how to incorporate more inquiry into our teachings and demonstrated how to relate students interest and inquiry to the BC curriculum. Some advice Rebecca gave us about our practicums that really touched me and I was able to relate to was that she mentioned how we as teachers set high standards and expectations for ourselves and practicums and learning in general is so set up so we do fail and that failure is okay is the process of learning. This touched me, because I am one of those people who am very hard on myself and set high standards. Additionally, while we explored Rebecca’s kindergarten classroom, I was able to take a few images of what I thought was unique and I would potentially incorporate into my future classroom. I really enjoyed that the classroom did not feel like a classroom and felt more like a home. Below are a few images of the layout of Rebecca’s classrooms and a few centers/objects she had out for the students to play with. Ultimately, this field trip was very beneficial for myself, because I would like to become a kindergarten teacher as well, and seeing a unique creative classroom setup and a different way of teaching made me excited for my practicum and future as an elementary school teacher.