Fred Rogers, who focused on children's emotional and physical concerns wrote, “As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has – or ever will have – something inside that is unique to all time.”
“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning.”
With reflection, students engage more regions of their brains and make personal connections with the material. They analyze how their actions affected the outcome and how they might be able to do something differently or even better. Reflection helps them better understand how they can apply the concepts to other circumstances.
Reflection
Have you ever heard a child ask, “why do I need to learn this?” When a student owns their learning, there is a shift. With purpose learning, it is no longer how I can get a good grade. Often with purpose learning, a student will want to share what they learn with others. Their learning is often accelerated and they have a positive outward impact.
Purpose
One of the key benefits for experiential education is proving a safe environment that allows students to make mistakes, and learn from them without judgement. It is only natural that mistakes happen during the course of learning. Students need encouragement to have fun, try new things, learn at their pace and make a few mistakes!
Value of Mistakes
Students often tune out when lectured if they think the material doesn’t pertain to them. Experiential learning takes concepts and applies them to hands-on tasks, yielding real results. As the student interacts with the new material, it becomes real to them. Of course, each student’s learning experience will be guided by their unique perspective. One of the many beautiful experiences is that a student may have a completely different result from another student. Neither are wrong since it is their experience.
Real-world relevance
Experiential learning is a process. It is a craft in itself. Because experiential learning is largely student-directed, students learn how to learn in the process. Students develop the skills to find credible information, they learn how to communicate more effectively, they learn critical thinking, and they learn to solve problems. The list goes on!
Promotes Life-Long Learning
Benefits of Experiential Education
Your child takes responsibility for their learning
We are all wired a little differently and we all learn differently. Too often, education is one size fits all. This creates a culture of the “winners” and the “losers.” In reality, some of us are visual, some are auditory, some are kinesthetic, some are reading and writing learners. To add complexity, some of us are social, analytic or nature learners. No learning style fits every student. With experiential education, students find the style that works best for them.
I am an educator that provide relationship-based therapeutic services for children who are neurodivergent, autistic and/or suffering from a brain injury, in North Shore, MA. I can help!
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