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Lessons Taught, Lessons Learned Vol. II
From Then To Now: The Value of
Experiential Learning
by Clara Carol Potterville
Copper River Schools
This is my second opportunity to attend the
Rural and Interior Alaska Instructional Improvement Academy. While I
have taught many years and have been involved in an extensive variety
of teaching levels and assignments, there has never seemed to come
the time when I felt like I knew enough, had the best approaches and
techniques down pat, and could "wing it" on my expertise and
experience. As we set out to prepare students to participate
successfully in an ever changing world, we educators should be the
first to admit that the field of education too is an ever changing
stage with new theories, new approaches, new techniques, new subject
areas, and even new challenges of students at risk, students with
cultural differences, students with shattered homes and dreams at an
ever increasing young age. However, in a truly positive vein, these
challenges can be addressed with optimism and success by keeping
several goals in mind and working diligently toward them, not
singularly, but as a team. Sharing and caring and working together to
make schools better.
I would add that not only schools as such, but
the whole learning environment can become an integral part of a
meaningful experiential learning approach. We express concern and
desire to change our teaching styles and formats to deal directly
with real life situations, including all those places which touch
one's daily life (some educators are now using the term, bioregions).
I began teaching in the early sixties and recall a very special
handout which showed a pyramid of effective learning, the broad base
of which consisted of active participation as the most meaningful of
all. This would include field trips, experiments, special projects
and activities in which the student was involved personally. Midway
up the pyramid, would be represented the vicarious experiences
involving many of the senses, such as a movie, slide presentation,
flannel board display, pictures, bulletin boards, etc. At the top was
represented the least effective method of all, listening to a
speaker, or an activity involving one sense only. In those days
emphasis was strongly in favor of the utilization of many senses and
later multi-sensory approach became the password for how to reach
each student. For many years, "Hands On" activities were and are
still purported to be the best way to involve and impress students
with meaningful experiences.
We educators have done much with educational
jargon through the last 25 years, but what is important is that
through these years, never mind the catchy title, it becomes very
apparent that the closer we can relate learning to a student's daily
life and what is meaningful and important to him or her, and the more
we actively involve that student, the more meaningful and successful
the learning experience is going to be.
I have particularly enjoyed Judy Hoeldt's
article in Lessons Taught, Lessons Learned titled "Learning
Through Experience." She states, "An
elementary school that would be ideal for a rural community would use
a process-oriented curriculum with a project-centered approach to
experiential learning." My own teaching philosophy and style totally
support this approach.
My week of workshop training in "Hands On" Experiential Science has provided
a most delightful collection of experiential learning activities. The instructor,
Professor Verne
Rockcastle of Cornell University, has done a superb job in giving us
training in both content and process-oriented experiences. In this
workshop I learned much in the way of the practicality, the
motivation, the integration possibilities for across-the-curriculum
teaching, my favorite mode of instruction. Just as Judith Hoeldt
points out the value of project-oriented learning, I have used the
approach in my classroom and found the students and parents to be
highly successful and enthusiastically supportive respectively. It is
educationally inspiring to have the opportunity to have a person like
Professor Rockcastle share literally hundreds of projects for the
purpose of exciting and motivating students and teachers in their
pursuit of problem solving, process learning, and broadening content
mastery through experiential discovery and cooperative learning
techniques.
This summer I plan to develop an "Integrated
Curriculum Unit" using a process-oriented curriculum with a
project-centered approach to experiential learning. In the context of
an experiential framework, I intend to teach the students to develop
a keener sense of observation, to extend their creative thinking and
problem solving, and to affect their behavior by causing them to be
more aware of their environment (or bioregion). Further goals are to
help them realize how they are an intricate part of their environment
both in what they do in it and in what it does to them. The manner of
reaching the students would be to appeal to their senses and to
relate all things as much as possible to their own daily lives. Thus,
directly, I would involve students in experiential learning
activities upon which to build a foundation of principles and
understandings for content mastery, basically in science, but
extending actually across the curriculum.
The Hands-On Experiential Science was a
marvelous workshop. The enthusiasm and expertise of Professor
Rockcastle is exemplary of motivated, process-oriented, and
project-centered learning. Evaluation of projects was contingent not
only on following directions, but on experimentation and seeking ways
to make something work. Further exploration and experimentation
provided opportunities for gifted and talented students to continue
on the learning spectrum. At the same time, students low in verbal
skills but high in observation and analysis of their experiences had
a chance to experience success and an opportunity to excel. Professor
Rockcastle cited many examples of urban underprivileged children who
were able to really turn on to Hands-On activities in science and
because it was meaningful and personally experiential, motivation
carried on to other integrated curricular activities. I believe this
would be very true for Alaskan rural students.
The Science Workshop meshes nicely withScollons'
Axe Handle Academy proposal in the area
of curriculum, especially the area of Bioregional Studies. The
article in LT/LL states that "We believe that it is equally important
for the professional academic researcher and the manager of the local
hardware store to understand the effects of his or her work on the
bioregions of the earth." In other words, each person has a
responsibility to and for his bioregion. Another supportive position
to this proposal is the idea of Cooperative Competence. The teacher
instructs one individual or group and allows chain or peer teaching,
thus freeing one self to work with others who are ready to move
on.
One additional comment in response to theAxe
Handle Academy article
- Planning
vs. Preparing. Planning is our most frequent defense against the
unknown, limiting our imagination of the future and our responses to
predicted outcomes. "With a plan we seek to control outcomes, to
eliminate change, to eliminate the random and the wild." Preparing is
different. We always expect diversity of outcomes. In preparing, we
assume we do not know or cannot predict what future conditions will
be. In preparing, we enlarge the future in our own imagination. We
seek to make ourselves ready. In preparing we express our belief in
our adaptability, our responsiveness, our willingness to accept what
comes." I support this philosophy strongly and was so pleased to find
it expressed so well.
I intend to compile a teacher's resource book
following this workshop and prior to fall's re-entering the
classroom. This will consist of 1) a systematic organization of
Professor Verne Rockcastle's handouts, 2) my tidied-up workshop
notes, 3) a section on experiments with recommended grade or age
level and materials needed, and 4) suggestions for integrated
curriculum follow-up activities. Best of all, I will outfit a
container (probably a large fishing tackle box) with most of the
basic materials for a large selection of the experiments, with models
to represent my understanding of how to do the project and something
to show students and other teachers. The resource book which I make
will also point out the experiments' practical principles as related
to daily life. A materials list will be included at the end as well
as a comment to address project completion and cooperative competence
as a means of evaluation.
In closing, I would point out I plan to share
this material and approach with co-workers as well as students, and
hope to acquire administrative sanction and financial support to
assist in purchasing materials for students. I would like to
encourage our district to become involved with the Science Consortium
and would extend appreciation to them for their participation in the
Rural and Interior Alaska Instructional Improvement Academy. I am
most grateful for the opportunity to attend. There is a real feeling
of unity and cooperation in coming together with teachers from around
the state sharing common goals of searching for the best ways to meet
the needs of our students, and to share a camaraderie with those in
our chosen profession as we become once again charged to go out and
do our best. The Academy was great.
Foreword
Ray Barnhardt
Part I *
Rural School Ideals
"My
Goodness, People Come and Go So Quickly Around
Here"
Lance C. Blackwood
Parental Involvement
in a Cross-Cultural Environment
Monte Boston
Teachers and
Administrators for Rural Alaska
Claudia Caffee
The Mentor Teacher
Program
Judy Charles
Building
Networks
Helen Eckelman
Ideal Curriculum and
Teaching Approaches for a School in Rural
Alaska
Teresa McConnell
Some Observations
Concerning Excellent Rural Alaskan Schools
Bob Moore
The Ideal Rural
Alaska Village School
Samuel Moses
From Then To Now:
The Value of Experiential Learning
Clara Carol Potterville
The Ideal
School
Jane Seaton
Toward an Integrated,
Nonlinear, Community-Oriented Curriculum
Unit
Mary Short
A Letter from
Idealogak, Alaska
Timothy Stathis
Preparing
Rural Students for the Future
Michael Stockburger
The Ideal
Rural School
Dawn Weyiouanna
Alternative
Approaches to the High School Curriculum
Mark J. Zintek
Part II *
Rural Curriculum Ideas
"Masking" the
Curriculum
Irene Bowie
On Punks and
Culture
Louise J. Britton
Literature to Meet
the Needs of Rural Students
Debra Buchanan
Reaching the Gifted
Student Via the Regular Classroom
Patricia S. Caldwell
Early Childhood Special
Education in Rural Alaska
Colleen Chinn
Technically
Speaking
Wayne Day
Process Learning
Through the School Newspaper
Marilyn Harmon
Glacier Bay
History: A Unit in Cultural Education
David Jaynes
Principals of
Technology
Brian Marsh
Here's Looking
at You and Whole Language
Susan Nugent
Inside, Outside and
all-Around: Learning to Read and Write
Mary L. Olsen
Science Across
the Curriculum
Alice Porter
Here's Looking at
You 2000 Workshop
Cheryl Severns
School-Based
Enterprises
Gerald Sheehan
King Island
Christmas: A Language Arts Unit
Christine Pearsall Villano
Using Student-Produced
Dialogues
Michael A. Wilson
We-Search and
Curriculum Integration in the Community
Sally Young
Artist's
Credits
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