Having an Experience by John Dewey

To Dewey experiences were when things ran themselves to fulfillment, and the different parts of the experience flow freely from one part to another, but are distinct and individual within the experience. The experience as a whole is unified by a singular defining quality, such as that fight or that car ride. And while this unifying trait is not intellectual or emotional, the experience itself is both. By the unifying factor, and the emotions attached an experience is memorable for a person, and thus this is why as educators we want to have our schools focus on the experiences of the students. When a student has an experience the classroom material that they learned through it will resonate with them more than if they had just read the information from a paragraph in a textbook. Instead of students being constantly lectured to, we want for the kids to have memorable experiences such as the time when they created maps for the woods behind the school, or the time they visited the local pond to learn about habitats.

What is Experiential Education? What is the Question? by Steve Chapman

In this section of the paper Chapman toils with the question of what exactly is experiential education, and it comforts me that even as an expert on the topic he seems to have trouble with giving out an exact definition. I’ve read a lot of essays for my education classes on experiential education, but still when my friends who are not in education ask me what it is, I am not sure what exactly to tell them. Like Chapman says, yes it can be going out to a ropes course, but that in itself is not experiential education. Just doing an activity does not count, and that is not all of what experiential education encompasses. Students can learn all sorts of things from experiential education, it is not just one topic that they focus on. Students have these experiences and then the teacher guides them with making connections and having an intentional goal with what they want students to take away from them. Like Chapman says however, as the guides for our students it is our duty to use experiential education in a way that is meaningful to them and their community. Students who have no interest in robotics are not going to learn math or technology from that as well because it does not have much meaning to them. However, if students recognize an area of their school that is underutilized, making blueprints for how to fix that may engage them in their math skills in a more meaningful and memorable way, as well as getting involved in the community. This is such a positive outcome because we want to create students who are passionate about being positive influencers on their community, and experiential education is a great way to achieve this.

What is Experiential Education? Asking the Question by Pam McPhee

The biggest takeaway I had from McPhee’s portion of the article was when she described how she remembers Roman and Greek influence on architecture, but not certain teachers she had for an entire year, or the classes she took in college. I relate to this a lot because I often find myself questioning a high school teacher’s name or not being able to remember all 5 classes that I took last semester. Obviously, these classes or teachers that I cannot remember must not of had a large impact on me, and if I cannot remember even taking the class it seems unlikely that I would remember the stuff that I learned for that class. As a teacher I want to create memorable experiences that my students can take with them through life. I would like to teach early elementary, and so I am going to have to work really hard in order to have them remember the things that they did in kindergarten or first grade. The early years can be formative years when the child is learning whether they like school or not, and I want to make as many kids excited for learning as I can. Young kids are active and they do not want to sit in a desk all day listening to a teacher, and I do not want that for my classroom. I want for my kids to be able to learn science by being outside, or by watching butterflies come out of their cocoon, and for them to learn social studies by acting out historical reenactments or by engaging in their surrounding community.

Experiential Learning: A Teacher’s Perspective by Tom Herbert

It’s extremely important to note what Herbert says about experiential learning not being black and white, but instead a continuum, and learning and teaching practices can fall anywhere on that continuum. There are multiple things that make up experiential learning, and how well we as teachers implement these different components can put teachers on different places on the continuum. These five aspects are reality, risk, responsibility, predictability, and reflection. As I future teacher I anticipate the risk and responsibility on behalf of the students to be the hardest part. As the teacher it seems like the correct thing to do to make the lesson plan and have the days entirely accounted for. Turning that power over to the students at times seems wrong, especially when it is young, elementary students. It seems wrong because the teacher knows and is responsible for what the kids are supposed to know. If kids don’t know what they are supposed to learn in the first grade then how can they be in charge of making the decisions in the classroom on what to do. I want for my students to be able to take responsibility however, so that may look like coming up with different options and having kids choose. I do think there is a limit to responsibility however, and at some point, the teacher should have a guiding role. This really struck me at the part in the piece where Herbert mentioned the staff not telling a student that it would be pointless to bring a fishing pole because there would be a thick layer of ice over the lake. The teachers could have saved him the hassle and possible embarrassment by letting that student know beforehand. In that instance I think it is the teacher’s responsibility to guide the student. This should also be the case when guiding students when they take responsibility for their learning.

To Teach, the Journey in Comics, Chapter 5 by William Ayers

Ayers book emphasizes that the traditional classroom structure may not be the best way to engage kids in learning. Ayers speaks specifically of “liberating the curriculum” from the rigid, textbook approach we are so accustomed to. Lecturing a textbook, not only puts kids to sleep, but it often simplifies and “sanitizes” the world that we live in (Ayers 70). He gives the example of teaching kids slavery. Kids may read over it in a book, or hear their teacher give a lecture on the act of slavery, but will kids actually learn about slavery as the horrific thing that it actually was (and still is)? To read in a textbook that people from Africa were enslaved and brought to the Americas is one thing. To read first-hand accounts of the slaves, and to read bills and laws that took away the rights of these human beings is another. To see a slave ship and look at how the slaves were transported, and to read accounts of lost slave ships, and of the millions of slaves who died on the Atlantic is an experience that will affect students more than a brief textbook entry. Experiential education needs to have the goal of not only actively engaging students in the material, but getting them to do so in a meaningful way that helps them grow as a person. One should not just speak of the statistics when it comes to slavery to learn the facts for a test. Teachers need to teach this while also engaging the students in a way that has them take interest in our world, and makes them want to change it for the better. This thought process can apply to so many more things that we can teach our students about. Students can learn about hunger and science by working in a garden, they can learn about poverty and math by learning about finances. The possibilities are endless, teachers just need to step out of their comfort zone and embrace it.

To Teach, the Journey in Comics, Chapter 6 by William Ayers

When students are being put through more testing than ever, it can be hard for teachers to rationalize experiential education when they know that their students will be put through so many exams that are meant to quantify them as a human being. Testing and tracking in my opinion can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When kids as young as 6 and 7 do not do well on exams they can begin to think that they are not good in school, and that if they are not good at school, then they may think why even bother with it. As teachers it is our job to make sure that these kids do not think like this. School should not be about doing well on an exam, but learning and experiencing our world. Ayers mentions other ways to think about our students so that we ourselves do not also begin to see our students as merely a test score. He calls them the 3 P’s and these 3 P’s have their foundations in experiential learning. They are performances, projects, and portfolios. Performances can be experiential when students put on historical plays that they wrote, or when they create songs and raps to learn the different aspects of poetry. Projects can be experiential when kids create a community garden to learn about photosynthesis and hunger in the community, or when kids create family trees to learn about genetics and heritage. Portfolios can be experiential when they include artwork done by the students, and reflections and journal entries about their experiences at school. Students should not be judged solely on their test scores but instead each child should be looked at through a wide variety of things.

Experiential Education as Emotionally Engaged Learning by Bill Proudman

Chapman describes experiential education as emotionally-engaged learning, not hands-on learning. I agree with this description because experiential education is not just going outside and doing a ropes course; it is learning that gets the student invested in learning. If a student hates a high ropes course it is very probable that all they will learn from it is how much they hate heights, or that ziplining is not something they enjoy at all. They will not get meaningful learning experience from that.

Experience and Education Chapter 2 by John Dewey

In this excerpt from Dewey he reminds us that just because we have an experience does not make it an educative or productive one. Instead, some experiences may actually stunt our growth. Experiences may become hindrances for a number of reasons. In the moment we can really enjoy a particular experience, but if it affects us from participating to our fullest extent later on then it can be negative. For instance, we might do really well at an activity, but if because do well at it one time that makes us less sensitive to our surroundings the next time we do that activity then it is a miseducative experience. It could also happen that experiences are so far apart or that they are not linked well together that they end up not promoting the experience and education that they had originally sought out. Though this is just a small excerpt it is important to keep this is mind. Educator’s may be so excited to try out experiential education with their own students that they might rush into things without taking time to assess the different possibilities. The point of experiential education is not to cram in as many classroom activities in as possible, but to educate in a productive way that is more memorable for the students. If adequate planning is not done by the teacher then it could just end up being the stereotypical example of kids on high ropes course but learning nothing. I hope that as a teacher I can work against this miseducation of my students. This can be done by creating well thought out lesson plans that correlate to and emphasize what we are learning. Since I want to teacher younger grades I would not want to overwhelm the kids with too much. While emphasizing experiential learning in my own class I also want to make sure that we have time in the classroom to reflect on our experiences and learn from them instead of just jumping from one activity to the next.

Tumblr as a Resource for Experiential Education

While Tumblr may not initially come to mind when teachers think of experiential education it can be used as a resource, and proves a point that teachers just need to be creative and try new things out when thinking about experiential education. One of the main components of experiential education is the reflection, when students gather and connect what they learned during their experience. Tumblr can be used as a tool for this. Students may write posts like journal entries on the website onto their blog, and then will be able to look at other student’s reflections and see how they are the same and how they are different. Students can also look at other posts around the website and see how their experiences connect to what other people are posting around the world. It is important to not only reflect on how we feel about things, but take the time to look at how others feel, and work that into our own reflection.

Pinterest as a Resource for Experiential Education

While taking on the challenge of experiential education may seem overwhelming to some teachers, it is important to remember that you are not the first nor will you be last teacher to incorporate experiences into your classroom. The good things about this is that teachers can get ideas and feedback from teachers who have done this before. Pinterest is a great resource for teachers trying to figure out how to make their classroom more progressive and experiential. There are plenty of boards that offer ideas such as using seashells to create experiences in the classroom, and creating travel journals. These boards not only offer ideas but also offer pages full of resources where teachers can find out more about experiential education. These include but are not limited to books about experiential education, and organizations that foster its development. Within one page on the website educators can find scores of information that can help them in their own classroom. Some example boards include: https://www.pinterest.com/harperlj/outdoor-and-experiential-education/?lp=true, and https://www.pinterest.com/ecampusontario/experiential-learning/?lp=true.