“Experience” the Difference – Guiding a Child’s Journey into Natural Learning
By Joe Parrino
Birchwood School’s emphasis on experience is guided by the Natural Learning Model (NLM), a pathway to deeper learning. According to the model, experience must work in concert with knowledge and agency. Knowledge is the information and skill set within a subject’s domain. Agency is a person’s exercise of the knowledge through their own willpower and cycles of success. Experience is someone’s perception of what their knowledge and agency are teaching them about reality. Because such a perception is generative, new interests and attitudes arise from the experience which then drive the learner toward further knowledge, agency, and experience.
Birchwood School’s emphasis on experience is guided by the Natural Learning Model (NLM), a pathway to deeper learning. According to the model, experience must work in concert with knowledge and agency. Knowledge is the information and skill set within a subject’s domain. Agency is a person’s exercise of the knowledge through their own willpower and cycles of success. Experience is someone’s perception of what their knowledge and agency are teaching them about reality. Because such a perception is generative, new interests and attitudes arise from the experience which then drive the learner toward further knowledge, agency, and experience.
One of these days, I might seek professional help for my map collection. Just ask the students surrounded by my wall-to-wall collection of globes, Africa drawings, street guides, stacks of atlases, and country-shaped cork boards. I’ve owned clocks, guitar picks, and shower curtains decorated with the continents among other oddities.
Yet for all my map-mania, I remain clear headed about the difference between a map and a journey. The map marks the steps of others. The journey marks where your own feet have trod. One great mind, John Dewey, draws this distinction in his 1902 book “The Child and the Curriculum.”
“The map is not a substitute for a personal experience ... the map [is] a summary, an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences, [and therefore] serves as a guide to future experience.”
Birchwood teachers – whether their specialty be social studies, science, or another subject – strive to provide journeys along with their maps. They certainly do use materials such as textbooks, writing samples, and lab demos which like maps “provide an arranged and orderly view of previous experiences.” However they don’t substitute these materials for a student’s personal experience.
Our emphasis on experience is guided by the Natural Learning Model (NLM), a pathway to deeper learning. According to the model, experience must work in concert with knowledge and agency. Knowledge is the information and skill set within a subject’s domain. Agency is a person’s exercise of the knowledge through their own willpower and cycles of success. Experience is someone’s perception of what their knowledge and agency are teaching them about reality. Because such a perception is generative, new interests and attitudes arise from the experience which then drive the learner toward further knowledge, agency, and experience.
How do Birchwood classrooms harness the power of experience? Teachers design lessons that put students in close touch with the essential structure of their subject. For science teachers, that means focusing on the thinking habits of scientists such as exploring the natural world and cultivating curiosities about how things work. Students train in these mental habits from fifth through eighth grade as they participate in the science fair. It’s true that teachers provide more guidance to a fifth grader through the steps of scientific investigation than they would to an eighth grader. Yet because the fifth grader is still practicing authentic habits of mind for science, their limited agency can reap an experience as productive as the eighth grader’s experience. If the student’s perception of reality leads to new interests and attitudes, that suggests the learning is proceeding naturally.
How about that group of fourth graders forming teams in a Birchwood social studies class? Their assignment is to make an abolitionist newspaper. Newspapers against slavery were well-circulated during the days of the Underground Railroad when thousands of Ohioans coordinated their efforts to help fugitives escape to Canada. Students plan, interview, write, edit, and layout a broadsheet of historically correct content to create their own newspaper: reports, opinion pieces, graphics, and even comics. They practice project management on a strict deadline. And they must carry out all these tasks under a hush of secrecy as they have been warned that “enslavers” are prowling about. Once the project “goes to press,” the students have gained so much more than a good grade. They have gained Experience of the essential structure of social studies which calls for students to channel the perspectives of characters and groups from the past.
Sometimes the experience comes wrapped in a contest. Last year, Birchwood’s language arts teachers coached seventh and eighth graders through the NPR Podcast Challenge, a competition offering students the chance to get their work played on national public radio. Teachers guessed that the contest might immerse students deeply into the essential structure of their subject. Expository essays require writers to exercise the following habits of mind: investigate an idea, gather evidence, explain the idea at length, and draw conclusions. The podcast format, teachers recognized, could provide a significant upgrade to the experience over the assignments given in previous years. After all, students would be adapting expository writing to the demands of a popular media format. To achieve the quality and crispness of a podcast, student essays would have to progress through even more drafts than usual. The need for relevant sound bites to edit into the script required students to word their interview questions more strategically than they otherwise would. In the end, the experience might have required a lot of the students, but it also gave them a fresh outlook on the writing process and possible applications of writing. NPR chose a Birchwood eighth grader’s podcast as one of their finalists and awarded an honorable mention to two other students here.
External rewards can motivate us. So cover the refrigerator with all the certificates that come home. Commend every achievement. And make a big deal too of the experience that spurred your child to new knowledge and greater agency. In time, they will treasure the pathway more than the pretty paper.
Click here to read more articles on the Natural Learning Model and other tenets of a good education.
This article was written by Birchwood School fifth through eighth grade social studies subject specialist Joe Parrino. He is a graduate of Case Western Reserve University with dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in history and Asian studies, the University of Illinois where he completed a Master of Science in journalism, and Austin Peay State University where he earned a Master in Teaching. Mr. Parrino has helped his students achieve success in National History Day at the local, state, and national levels.
