New Middle School Experiential Learning Day

On Tuesday, November 19, the entire middle school of Vail Mountain School had our first iteration of an Experiential Learning Day. While Vail Mountain School has always had success with experiential learning via our robust outdoor education program, the new Learning Elevated Strategic Plan emboldens the school to become an established leader in this method of instruction. The middle school decided to seize the opportunity to adapt former programming to better tie student experiences into the curricula.

In our new strategic plan, Vail Mountain School defines experiential learning as a cycle of experience, reflection, analysis, and experimentation. While individuals frequently consider experiential learning as occurring outside of the classroom with community partnerships or field work, students are also engaged in this cycle of learning within the classroom through opportunities such as labs or teacher crafted activities. The goal is for students to apply their academic learning and skills to real world or authentic situations to deepen their understanding of content while also preparing students to flourish in college and in life. 

The inception of this Experiential Learning Day began with our Middle School Theatre program. Our theater director explored an opportunity for all of her students to be able to tour and experience the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. The goal of this experience was to provide students with an understanding of how high level performances are run from start to finish and for our students to learn the capabilities of another theater. While this was clearly a valuable opportunity for our students, we were then presented with a challenge as our Middle School theater program is 38 students strong, which would mean that almost half of the Middle School would be out of school on this day. With that in mind, the Middle School faculty began conversations to potentially provide opportunities for students who were not in the Middle School Theatre class. 

 

As a result of those conversations, our 6th & 7th grade science teacher proposed that he would take his non-theater students to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science to do work connected with their science curriculum. At this point, we decided that we could utilize this day for the whole Middle School to go to Denver to engage in experiential learning! Our last task was to find opportunities for our non-theater 8th grade students in Denver. The 8th grade programming took more time to develop, but became the most powerful experience of the day for our students. First, we scheduled a tour of the Clyfford Still Museum, which tied into the students' study of art as well as their Algebra course as they were learning about the formula of a line, and Clyfford Still included lines in his work that held special meaning. Next, we were able to schedule a visit to the Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery, which is an art installation that tied well into students’ recent learning of light and sound waves in their science class. However, the most powerful opportunities were tied into the 8th grade Civics curriculum. We were able to secure time with Denver Mayor and Vail Mountain School alumnus, Mike Johnston. The students prepared questions for the Mayor and had thirty minutes to engage in a question and answer session, which was followed up by further time with two members of his staff. While this alone was a great experience for our students, we were able to further their learning by attending a showing of Hamilton at the Buell Theater that evening. 

These experiences by themselves allowed students to seek knowledge in the real world based on their classroom learning, tied the arts into core content, and allowed faculty to further develop the character of our students as they navigated a city and multiple venues. However, the benefits do not stop there alone. Faculty and students returned to school and were then able to engage in reflection on the experiences, analyze how these experiences tied into their prior knowledge, and then experiment with applying this new learning to their future studies in each of their classes.  

The Middle School has been energized by our first Experiential Learning Day and is already excited about the next iteration in the spring. The faculty is engaging in the same cycle of experience, reflection, analysis, and experimentation as the students. We are analyzing how we can deepen student engagement with future programming that is tied further into our curriculum. We already have three opportunities on the horizon to engage students further in experiential learning. First, our 7th & 8th grade students will be actively working on their science fair projects when they return from winter break in January. They must develop an experiment and hypothesis before presenting their findings to outside judges from our community partners. Next, our 6th grade students have already begun to learn about the history of the 10th Mountain Division Huts prior to their hut trip. Their learning will include time with Chris Anthony, who has been inducted into the Colorado Snowsports Hall of Fame and developed a 10th Mountain Division documentary. Finally, our 8th grade will be diving into their snow science unit in March, which deepens their understanding of our local environment and the importance of backcountry safety. This unit culminates in their two-night hut trip, during which they will be putting their learning to the real-world test with the guidance of local avalanche instructors. 

Experiential learning is alive and well at Vail Mountain School. We are excited to continue to share future enhancements and programming as we elevate humans for good.