Testimonials
The following excerpts from newspapers, magazines, journals, and books offer additional perspectives on the work of Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound.
Student Voices
Teacher Voices
Parent Voices
Press Voices
Student Voices
I felt like a real scientist looking into a microscope and when I found the specimen I felt awesome. When I sit down in the grass and write down some information about the ponds, it feels like you are a reporter observing the scene and you've got to make sure you get everything because you want the front page. When you are done with the expedition, you go home and tell you mom and dad what you learned and they practically don't even know what you are talking about. It's like you wrote a new chapter in the encyclopedia. Six weeks ago I would never have known about pond life.
| | —Dalles Kalmes, student
Table Mound Elementary School
Dubuque, Iowa |
Teacher Voices
The following is an excerpt from an interview with Deb Fordice, a sixth-grade teacher at Audubon Elementary School in Dubuque, Iowa. In the article, published in the March, 1998 issue of The Web, Fordice explains the impact of a learning expedition in which students wrote biographies of residents in a local nursing home.
I think that their new writing skills came out when we had a districtwide writing assessment for sixth graders in April. Geri and I were worried, because we did very little writing other than the biographies, letter writing, and poetry. But when the kids did the writing assessment, it was incredible to see them apply the webbing and the paragraphing and the introduction and conclusion form that they used for the biography chapters.
But they learned much more than writing. They learned about commitment. A lot of them said in their last reflection, "When we first started this it was just a school project, but now it means so much more to me than that. I still have the gift that so-and-so gave me for Christmas. It's just a decorated tin can." It's the stick-to-itiveness. Even when you have difficulty you push on. They saw a quality product when they were done. They developed a relationship with someone they never would have developed a relationship with before, and I think that their attitude toward older people changed. They learned how to work with someone all year long, whether they got along with that person or not. They were constantly making decisions, with every sentence that was verbalized and wrote with someone else. It was definitely teamwork. They learned about technology. It was so much more than writing. They learned how to speak, they learned how to listen. Their reflections may not have used the word "service," but they wrote things like, "I left there feeling like I had done something really great for someone."
Below, Vivian Stephens, a teacher at the Clairemont Elementary School in Decatur, Georgia, describes how peer critique is used to improve student work in her classroom. The excerpt comes from a chapter in Journeys Through Our Classrooms, edited by Denis Udall and Amy Mednick (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1996).
I had always asked students to share their work, but I didn't have them critique each other in the way they do now. It was more negative than positive feedback. I borrowed the idea from the architecture summit [an Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound learning expedition for educators], where we would critique each other's blueprints, first offering positive comments about the strengths of the work. Then we would get into what could be improved; what were the areas for growth. The architecture summit provided me with not just the strategy of critique, but the words for describing it. Having a language for critique helps me to understand it and communicate it to the children better. When we talk in my class about being kind, they know that they need to start with something positive before they move into areas of improvement. I have the author sit on an "author's stool" in front of the room, and everyone gathers around on the carpet. It's like saying, "It's time for you to listen to me." When the author has finished, she calls on her peers for their feedback... Everyone has to go through the critiquing process. No one is exempt. It's a chance to talk about things we're good at and those we have to work on. Now we recognize that when we make mistakes those are areas for growth, and we all have them.
Parent Voices
The essence of expeditionary learning is that it motivates students. And I think motivated students are good students.
-Dan Eaton, parent at the King Middle School, Portland, Maine
Quoted in the Christian Science Monitor, 2/24/98
When Rafael Hernandez School teachers in Boston planned their learning expedition on architecture, they needed an expert to help their students with their architectural models. They invited a parent who was an architect, but they also discovered that another parent, Bertrand Daniels, who owns a limousine business, also had drafting experience and was eager to help.
"I've helped Quania with her work at home before," Daniels explained, "but this was the first time I wanted to go to school. The school makes you feel really welcome. They suggest it's a good idea for parents to go to school. They say, 'Come up anytime,' and you feel comfortable when you get there. That's the feeling a parent should have."
Quoted in "Respecting Parents," by Emily Cousins in Fieldwork: An Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound Reader, Volume I, edited by Emily Cousins and Melissa Rodgers, (Dubuque, IA: Kendall/Hunt, 1996).
Press Voices
Upgraded School Improves Kids' Scores (excerpt)
USA Today, June 2, 1998
by Mark Glassman
Copyright 1998, USA TODAY. Reprinted with permission.
Students at public school that undergo comprehensive reform-changes that touch all aspects of how schools teach-make greater gains on standardized tests than students at comparable schools without such reforms, says a new report focusing on Memphis schools.
A restructured school is one that clusters all of its educational efforts around a central theme such as teamwork or technology and provides teachers with additional training. For instance, a school in the Expeditionary Learning Outward Bound program undertook an architecture project to construct a full-sized adobe house, using math to draw up blueprints and language skills to write letters asking for building permits.
Outward Bound Leaps From Climbing Walls Into Schools
Christian Science Monitor, February 24, 1998
by Elizabeth Ross White
Click on the title to read the article.
Field Trips Are Gaining Serious Tone (excerpt)
New York Times, November 5, 1997
by Jacques Steinberg
Copyright 1997 by The New York Times. Reprinted with permission.
The field trip, once eagerly anticipated by teachers and students alike as a mindless day off at the local zoo or historical site, has evolved into serious work at many schools·.
At the School for the Physical City, an experimental public school on East 25th Street in Manhattan which focuses on what it calls expeditionary learning, one class learned mathematics recently by surveying a building under construction at Baruch College, while another studied meteorology by setting up anemometers to measure the wind speed at Madison Square Park.
"By being an active learner," said Cheryl Sims, a science teacher at the school, which has students in grades 6 through 12, "information stays with you more."
Schools Need Cohesive Core (excerpt)
Denver Post, March 23, 1997
by Maria Music
Reprinted with permission.
[Expeditionary Learning] has had exciting results nationwide and in Denver, in a public school that serves metro-area students using state per-pupil funding, the Rocky Mountain School of Expeditionary Learning has a waiting list of hundreds who hope to win admission via lottery. Teachers and students take expeditions into the unknown, engaging in interdisciplinary, experiential learning. A rigorous academic program and community service are used in multi-age classes. The result is a program that teachers, children and parents love, that improves scores and generates portfolios of work as a basis for assessment.
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