This title amuses me. I think the heading should instead have been: “Learning.” I believe that learning should always be experiential. A very particular experience that I remember from my childhood is burning my fingers on a red hot stove, because I did not trust my mother’s words when she warned: “Don’t touch the stove! It’s piping hot.” Notice that I actively ignored her counsel and was only able to learn that the stove was truly hot AFTER I had experienced the heat myself first-hand (pun intended). Sometimes we must learn the hard way, as it is often the quickest and most efficient.
Now I should strongly suggest that it is a terrible idea to start a Foods class by having all the students put their hands on a red hot stove until they learn what heat is. That is not my intention. Yet the very idea of a Foods class is to get students to experience what it is like to work in a kitchen or having to prepare your own meals yourself. I would even suggest putting Foods classes directly into a restaurant. Of course there are plenty of hurdles with that, but I will let you think about that for a minute. Would that not be the epitome of experiential learning? It is the same in any Science class: Are you more likely to remember your teacher telling you that you should not mix a lot of sodium with water… or to remember the massive explosion that set all the fire alarms off? Just saying…
In the time I have been on this planet, I have learned a lot in school. I have arguably learnt a lot more from my experiences outside of school. And if school is a place where learning happens, why should we not combine the two? Chopping firewood taught me a lot about the value of hard work and how proper technique can have you achieve a lot more in a shorter period of time. My first three weeks as a server I learned the importance of efficiently planning out your walking route in order to maximise your efficiency. Working at a High School during my first experiential practicum taught what it truly takes to be a good teacher.
Classroom and learning experiences have often been disconnected and I am committed to either bring the experience to my classroom or bringing the classroom to the experience, however that may look like.