Experiential Learning

As part of my internship at the Thea Bowman House in Utica, I am working on a capital campaign to raise money to repair the roof of the Refugee Center. Last week, I was interviewing teachers and students about what the building means to them for a video I am putting together to show prospective donors. I got into an offhand conversation with a teacher who had previously taught in the Utica Public School system. She discussed how the rigid curriculum, which is generally too advanced for many of the students, some of whom are immigrants, is currently not effective. While the concept of common core, getting everyone on the same page, is a great idea in theory, in practice it is somewhat of a disaster. The greater amount of time put towards testing takes time away from the classroom.. While listening to her speak of her own personal experiences, I thought of our Adirondack field trip and the importance of experiential education, which common core currently skips over.

The field trip to Lake Placid has been one of my favorite experiences at Hamilton thus far. It is one thing to read about historical locations, such as John Brown’s rock, and see pictures of different varieties of vegetation, but a whole different experience to snowshoe and actually see the vegetation first hand. I found identifying plant species using our field guides more effective than sitting in a classroom. The opportunities given to associate factual information with real life experiences made it much easier to retain knowledge than reading a textbook.

Another benefit not to be overlooked was the relationships formed on the trip. The class definitely became closer and bonded over a common interest in the Adirondacks. I would advocate that meaningful relationships are just important in college as the academic experience.

Something tells me that there would be no room for studying the Adirondacks in common core, and let alone time for a field trip. There is too much time allocated to state testing when students could be having meaningful experiences. An important thing to note is that field trips do not need to be as expensive or as planning intensive as our trip. I recently took part in bringing a group of preschoolers to a local flower shop in Utica. The bus company donated the bus and the store allowed us in for free. We showed the students the different colored flowers and baby ducks in the store. When we arrived back in the classroom, we read a book about ducks and discussed what we observed about the ducks’ behavior. I personally feel experiential learning has a place in our education system that common core is currently missing.

“Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.”

― John Dewey