Educational Experience

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As I am about to become a senior in college, it was difficult for me to look back over all the years of education to come up with the most powerful educational experience I have had.  I attended Princeton Montessori School, a very small school, from kindergarten to 8^th grade, and then a small private high school in Princeton from grades 9-12.   Because of this, I had an incredible educational experience from start to finish, and it was very difficult for me to think of one defining moment that has really changed me the most.

However, such moments do exist, and I have had several educational experiences that I feel have changed me, and will continue to change me as I learn and grow as a student and as an adult.  The one I have chosen to write about was in the 8^th grade, at the very small Princeton Montessori School.  The way the curriculum was set up, there was a different history theme every year.  Because the school was so small – only 9 people in my graduation 8^th grade class – the entire middle school was broken up into only two classrooms, and each class was made up of students from 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grades.  This enabled the rotation of history and science curriculums.  The three history themes were American History, Ancient Civilizations, and European History.  At the end of each year, the 8^th grade class would go on a complete immersion experience to the location of that particular year’s history curriculum.  When I was in 6^th grade, we learned about European History, and the 8^th grade class visited Paris and London.  The following year, the 8^th grade class visited Greece and Rome as part of the Ancient Civilizations study.  In my 8^th grade, year, the theme was American history, and we were to spend a week on the Oregon trail, traveling by wagon and horseback, sleeping in tents, and learning all about the history of our country.

To many, this trip would appear like a complete letdown after the previous two trips ventured to Europe.  However, not to my class.  We saw this experience as perhaps the most powerful educational opportunity we had ever had.  It was a ten day trip, beginning with a huge steak dinner at a Nebraska lodge.  We then set out on the covered wagon, carrying all of our belongings and spending most of the day either walking or riding on horseback.  Putting ourselves in the shoes of those that walked across the country to find new land was an incredible experience.  There is no better way to teach a student than to show them.  It is commonly said that the best writing will show not tell a story, and this experience on the Oregon train was a precise example of the merit of that statement.  No amount of work or studying we did could have possibly given us the depth and immersion experience that we had out in Nebraska and Utah.  We hiked and rode for 8 days, sleeping in authentic canvas tents and cooking authentic meals.  Ironically, our tour guide couldn’t read or write, much like many of the settlers we read about in our American History textbooks.

This experience, I believe, has been my most important and influential educational experience.  Not only did I learn an incredible amount of American history, but it really taught me the best way to teach and learn.  Teaching and learning is about more than sitting in a classroom and lecturing; it is about letting the students experience whatever you are trying to teach.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of students will never have the type of opportunity I had in the 8^th grade, but teaching and learning strategies can be taken from it, and applied to the typical school classroom.

This experience also showed me the important of teamwork, and that a strong team has the ability to do whatever we set our mind to.  The 8 days on the trail were not easy, and they were certainly not the same as Greece, Rome, Paris, or London.  We knew we had a more difficult experience ahead of us before we began, but we knew to use this experience to draw us together as class, and the bonds became stronger than ever.  It is because of all this, in addition to the immersion experience itself, that I believe had made my 8^th grade trip to the Oregon Trail the most important educational experience of my life.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 2:21 pm. It is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.