During my 25 years as a classroom teacher, I always enjoyed talking to former and future students, parents or just having a conversation with someone about teaching.
Once the fact that I taught sciences and more specifically biology became evident, there was one topic that was mentioned more often than any other during these conversations — dissection.
I would hear stories about the distinct smell of the formaldehyde, their initial thoughts on seeing the organism being dissected, or the feel and location of the internal organs. It was a rich immersive learning experience, and each student came away with something different. This is the beauty and benefit of experiential learning. The results can be unpredictable, varied and depending on the event, gratifying.
That classroom experience had a lasting effect, and it was just that, an experience! Was it experiential learning? Not in the same sense of the modern-day definition but in relation to other classroom opportunities, certainly a form of it.
When you look back on your youth and the experiences that taught you the most, they were likely just that — experiences. They produced enduring, deeply embedded knowledge that is readily recalled.
It might have happened in a classroom, taking part in an activity, playing a new sport, working at a part-time job or through another circumstance. Whatever it was, it must have had an impact because you are reflecting on it right now.
While experiential learning today may mean slightly different things to educators in the same school, across districts, countries or around the world, it is perceived to put a learner in an immersive opportunity that encourages reflection and has the potential for skill development. Keep in mind that students are not necessarily the only beneficiaries of experiential learning as the relationship between the learner and instructor can shift seamlessly to that of partners in learning.
Experience has taught me that new teachers tend to teach the way they were taught, in courses that they had success in.
After a few years of experience, confidence and support, they are willing to take chances once they recognize that the delivery of course content can be vastly different from actual learning.
I encourage school staff to work creatively to locate opportunities in the curriculum and school life that will afford a variety of immersive, hands-on learning opportunities.
For each learner, an experiential opportunity can have a variety of results from developing content to the opportunity to transfer their knowledge and making connections to the world. In some cases, these opportunities inspire students to pursue deeper learning in a certain field or they might decide to focus in a completely different direction.
Getting students ready for the next level or their future world is an ongoing journey.
One never truly knows when, where or how inspiration will arrive, which makes a student’s exposure to immersive learning meaningful and potentially impact-filled.
