How Will You Get To Know And Understand Your Students In Order To Create An Experiential Learning Opportunity For Them?

Image: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/school-students-children-board-3518726/

By Deborah Ehler-Hansen, M.Ed., 2020

For Educators

Shared Foundation: INQUIRE
Build new knowledge by inquiring, thinking critically, identifying problems, and developing strategies for solving problems (AASL, 2018).

This text will assist you as you INQUIRE, think critically, identify problems and develop strategies as you get to know your students well, so you can create a personalized, experiential learning experience for them.

To learn more about the AASL National School Library Standards, please see this web-page.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Community Mapping
Examining Local Community Data
Poverty Learning Gap - Language Learning Challenges
Poverty Learning Gap - Lack of Resources
Poverty Learning Gap - Empirical Data
Collecting Evidence to Understand Students and Their Experiences With The Learning Challenge
The Key To Successful Learning Outcomes Is In Creating Relationships
Develop A Plan to Get To Know And Understand Your Students: Critical Consciousness
Develop A Plan to Get To Know And Understand Your Students: Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Create An Identity-Safe Classroom
Develop A Plan To Get To Know And Understand Your Students: Identify and Describe Students
Student personal narratives impact student learning: Discovering My Identity
Strategies That Allow Teachers To Identify And Describe Students And Be Culturally Relevant
Experiential Learning Experiences Support ALL Students
So, What Exactly is Experiential Learning?
Examples of Experiential Learning
Reflection
Works Cited

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13-15
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18-21
22-23
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27-28
29-32

Introduction:

Welcome to this informational book on How to Develop And Implement A Plan To Know And Understand Your Students In Order To Create An Experiential Learning Opportunity For Them.

This book will help you understand what experiential learning is and how the personal narratives (their life experiences) of our students in Slate Valley have a direct influence upon their ability to learn. You will also gain an understanding of how your own critical consciousness can affect your ability to reach all students. Only once we understand how our own critical consciousness affects our teaching and we know and understand our students and the lives they live, or have lived in the past, will we be able to fully support our students in their endeavors to learn.

We will begin by taking a look at an opportunity gap within our school community. The gap is based upon the fact that 33-47.24% of our students live in poverty. We will look at literature that will help us understand how we can best help our students in Slate Valley. We will review strategies educators can take when designing their curriculum and learn about additional resources and ways in which we can support ALL students.

Incorporating the principles of culturally responsive pedagogy and experiential learning into the design of our curriculum will enable students to engage in deeper learning experiences and improve the relationships we have with all our students.

Community Mapping

To be able to identify and describe our students and answer questions about the population of students that we are serving, we will first need to do some research. We need to be able to answer the following questions, as we develop our plan to get to know and understand our students:
1. Who is the population we are serving?
2. Are there any opportunity gaps?
3. What do our students have in common?
4. How do they differ?
5. What does the literature tell us about this particular type of opportunity gap?

According to the journal article titled Community Mapping as a Tool for Developing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy by Tambra O. Jackson & Brandy S. Bryson, community mapping is something you should do to gain an understanding of the "story" of the community in which you teach. They assert, " by identifying assets, networks, and opportunities in the community; and by relating their new understandings to their developing identities as teachers. It is not enough to simply know that there are various kinds of communities in which students live" (123).

To begin mapping our community, you can start with websites, such as the Rutland Regional Planning Commission, which links to demographic, housing, employment, and industry information. Another site to begin with would be The Town of Fair Haven, VT website. To learn more about community mapping please read this journal article.

Examining Local Community Data

Now that we have learned about community mapping and you have a better picture of the local community, we need to do some research about the income levels of families living in our school district.

According to the Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) 2019 Free and Reduced Eligibility Report 33-47.24% of the students in the school district live in poverty. Almost half (47.24%) of our students at Fair Haven Graded School live in poverty. The statewide average eligibility is 40.14%. This means that at this school there are 7+% more students living in poverty than the statewide average.

According to the AOE report, to be "eligible" for the National School Lunch Program, "a student (must have) submitted an application and (must have) been certified as qualifying for free or reduced price benefits based on the Family Size and Income Guidelines published by the United States Department of Agriculture. To be eligible for free meals a family’s income must be at or below 130% of the Federal poverty level, the family/household receives 3SquaresVT or Reach-Up, or children are Directly Certified as free eligible” (2019).

Poverty refers to the socioeconomic status of a person. Poverty is an opportunity gap at our school that I have identified, which affects nearly half of all our students within our school district. This presents many challenges, not only to our schools, but also for our students.