The last week of school before Winter Break, we were lucky enough to have a bit of a snow. The grounds crew shoveled or plowed or something the playground and walkways, and created a sort of hill on the grassy area. While most teachers stayed inside to avoid the cold, our teacher grabbed a plastic tub, told the kids to get their coats and turned it into a sledding adventure. The kids took turns and helped each other out and all had fun.
When another student found a huge ice block, she didn't yell, "put that down". She said, "Wow! That's cool!" and encouraged kids to look deeper into the chunk of frozen molecules. Her natural curiosity inspires curiosity, which in turn inspires learning. Education comes from getting on your hands and knees, digging into the elements and asking questions. This is what learning should look like, sound like and feel like. This is Expeditionary. She is Expeditionary. This is the type of creative, out of the box teaching that leads to life long learning. Teachers with the freedom to teach actually can change the world!!
And if you're curious about what these kids learned from this experience, besides patience, team work, kindness, a sense of adventure, conquering fears, working with nature as opposed to against it, gravity, velocity, math, science, molecular biology, coping with and overcoming challenges, friction, force, inertia... other than all that, not much. ;o)
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