Reflections on Experiential Learning

Yesterday at our closing circle at BELL, we all shared a few thoughts on the past 2 weeks. At least half the group said, "this was the best experience of my life." One girl said she almost didn't come and "that would have been the biggest mistake I ever made." One girl said plainly, "At first I thought it was so great that we were from all over the globe, but now I'm sad we live so far apart." Another commented that, "BELL made me realize the person I want to be for the rest of my life, but how do I hold onto that when I go back home where nothing is like it is here?"

Good question. I wonder that myself.

Why isn't "real life" more like BELL? At BELL, we explore. We actively crush stereotypes and assumptions and create a safe space where people are comfortable being themselves. As I sat talking in one of the student tents on the last night, someone commented that, "BELL is an escape from the real world." Why is it that we need to escape the real world? Can't we make the real world more like BELL?

BELL is: curiosity. exploration. challenge. I love throwing questions at the students, daring them to figure out for themselves. BELL blurs the line between teacher and student because when I ask, "How many trees are on the 356 acres owned by Brown?" I have no idea either. The only difference is, I have a good idea how to calculate that without counting every tree. When I throw a pile of cardboard, aluminum foil, and duct tape down and say, "Build something that will bake cookies," I know what the finished solar oven could look like. But I don't know what it will look like.

I'm afraid that school stifles this curiosity. What do I accomplish in a typical week at university? I write a couple papers, learn how to apply some new equations, eat approximately 18-20ish meals, read several hundred pages, ... What did I accomplish in two weeks at BELL? I learned about quahogging and how it's just about the only profession still 100% male-dominated and about sewage overflow management in the Narragansett Bay and I discovered how the civil rights movement directly parallels the environmental movement and is all expressed in music from disco to soul to hip hop and I picked berries at a mostly organic farm (why not fully organic? I learned that too) and I stood underneath a wind turbine and watched as the power meter spun forward and I helped build a solar water heater and ate a fried egg sandwich from a handmade solar oven and I discovered that a shirt that was made in China actually has crossed the globe almost as many times as I've crossed the Mississippi and I learned how to lead a group of 29 and how to cool down strong personalities and how to encourage the listeners to talk and to push myself out of my comfort zone when it comes to dealing with people and to be confident even when I don't have a clue what I'm supposed to say.

That's experiential learning for you. How much of these lessons will the kids remember? Probably more than they'll remember their trigonometry formulas and the SAT vocabulary many of them studied while they were here. Now if the "real world" had everyone out exploring and asking questions themselves, I bet we'd all be a whole lot smarter. Or at least a lot better prepared for Life.