AEE eNews Update September 2009
- AEE Accredited Program Profile Sterling College
- AEE Profile Leonie Prinsloo, GRO Life Coaching, South Africa
- Pre Conference Brain-Based Learning & Experiential Education: Theory in to Practice
- Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program (pdf)
- ACA Research Symposium Call
- AEE EBTD Updates
Accredited Member Profile
Sterling College, Anne Morese, Faculty Member
K: What are your hopes for experiential education?
Anne: I would like the community to pull more professionals together who may not identify as experiential educators but who teach experientially. I would especially like to see experiential education where it is much needed but under-utilized such as in helping to remove socio-economic barriers and promote inclusive and diverse educational settings.
K: What is your involvement with experiential education?
Anne: I teach at Sterling College, where I get to teach the topics and skills that I happen to love. I mostly teach classes in outdoor education and leadership, ranging from a class that introduces people to the field, to challenge course instruction, whitewater canoeing, curriculum design, group process, and winter backpacking. I also co-teach a couple of first year orientation courses; the fall one involves working in a small group to learn skills for winter camping that also transfer metaphorically into other aspects of life. The January section explores snowshoeing, cross country skiing, orienteering, and paddlemaking with hand tools. Each year I also teach a variety of electives that have to do with social justice issues. These I have developed based on the fit between my background and student needs on campus and in general throughout our community. Every semester we meet with all our outdoor education and leadership students and ask them for input about the program and what courses they would like to see us offer, and we are able to put together at least one special topics course each year to address the interests of different cohorts of students.
K: What are some of the results of your work?
Anne: My courses provide opportunities for exploration both within oneself and within the natural and social environments that surround us. I generally start courses by asking students what they want to get out of the course, This allows me to incorporate what I learn from them into our time together. I believe my students are able to gain not only knowledge from my classes, but the capacity to learn in new settings, a belief in themselves, and specific skills acquired through observation, experimentation, coaching, peer feedback, and further honing. I believe that teaching is all about building relationships, so I aim to promote strong relationships, and strong relationship-building skills, within the groups I work with.
K: Why have you chosen a career in experiential education?
Anne: I learn at least as much as I teach. I always find that I am stimulated, energized, and rewarded by my experiences teaching. I love building relationships with people, and I love to watch and encourage people to grow. I generally find that I am challenged to grow as well, which is yet another benefit.
K: How did you get involved in Experiential Education?
Anne: First of all I always loved playing outdoors and this was fostered by the fact that I was fortunate enough to have lots of beautiful wild outdoor settings to explore as a child. I had a teacher in High School named Charlie Camp who ran the outing club and taught a course called “Survival Living”. We did all the fun stuff in that class and on our annual canoe trip that I have been doing and building on ever since, during my work with Outward Bound, teaching at Prescott College, and now at Sterling College. Of course I do a lot more now besides off-trail navigation, wild edibles, firebuilding, canoeing, night hikes, shelter building, sleeping out alone, and group decision-making; but that was where I first learned that you could potentially make a living while “playing outdoors”.
K: How did you become involved with AEE?
Anne: While I was working with Outward Bound (Voyageur Outward Bound) in the late 1980s I became aware of AEE and began attending conferences whenever I could.
K: What do you consider to be the most valuable benefit of AEE membership? And/or describe any volunteer leadership roles you have taken on as a member of AEE.
Anne: The chance to network, hear new ideas and see new ways of doing things, the opportunity to discuss crucial issues in my work with other colleagues. I enjoy meeting people at the conferences and I always feel validated in my involvement with AEE. I have volunteered on three accreditation teams and in each of those experiences have felt extremely enriched both by the chance to see how another organization does things and by the conversations and collegiality within the accreditation team.
Member Profile
Leonie Prinsloo, GRO Life Coaching , Pretoria, South Africa
I attended the AEE international conference in 2006, so since then, I was into Adventure therapy for youth.I do life coaching with children using the practice of adventure therapy. I am in Pretoria, a big city in South Africa. My passion is youth development and empowering kids to discover their full potential. At this stage, I am working with primary school age children.
The hurt and the lack of love in today’s children is unknown and scary to think about. The children have a lack of self-worth and the boys are bullies. The cry within each child more often than not remains unheard.
I have the amazing opportunity to work with the children at the school ground. We do life coaching and encourage them to take part in the activities. The activities varies from building puzzles, playing with balls and role play. Each activity was debriefed and the in-depth reflection for each learner was life changing. We use metaphors, the group of learners create their own methapors which will remind them of the learned experiences.
The one girl that I life coach, draw a picture of her family. Immediately I realized that she doesn’t have a relationship with her dad. She desperatly longs for him to recognize her. During the debrief she shared her story with me. We facilitated the experience, and I asked her to draw a picture of what she want, and all she drew was a big heart. So that picture reminded her that she must love her dad, and in order for her to build a relationship with her dad. She must spend quality time with him. The big heart sticked to her cupboard, reminds her daily of her love to others.
The follow up session with the girl, was new and refreshed. I asked her what did she do? She said she showed the picture to her dad, and said “DAD I LOVE YOU”. The amazing thing about adventure therapy is that it gives you the opportunity to freely express yourself, within a safe environment.
Hearing their inner voices and helping them to believe in themselves is a passion within me. It is a daily journey, and I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the children.
Leonie Prinsloo
GRO life coaching
South Africa
leonie@grolife.co.za
www.grolife.co.za
Announcing the Preconference to the 37th Annual International Conference, "Brain-based Learning & Experiential Education: Theory into Practice"
by Dr. Jay Roberts, Assistant Professor of Education at Earlham College
In 1999, the National Academy of Science published "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School," a ground-breaking compilation of the latest research on cognition, learning, and the brain.
For those that would like to learn more about cognition, learning, and the brain and want to explore their implications for both the theory and practice of experiential education, a pre-conference workshop will be offered at the 37th Annual AEE International AEE Conference in Montreal, Canada entitled, "Brain-Based Learning and Experiential Education: Theory Into Practice" led by Dr. Jay Roberts, Assistant Professor of Education at Earlham College.
The really exciting news, for experiential educators, is that much of the data and research conclusions emerging from this field strongly support experiential pedagogy.
With the rise of new fields such as neuroscience and new imaging techniques, such as PET scans, information and knowledge about how the brain learns is growing at a pace never before seen in human history. But that is not the exciting part.
The really exciting news, for experiential educators, is that much of the data and research conclusions emerging from this field strongly support experiential pedagogy. For too long, progressive educators have "known" intuitively that elements such as immersion, relevance, emotion, relationship, and experience are central to an engaged learning environment. Despite these convictions, research-driven data was hard to come by and experiential educators were often criticized for employing "alternative" or "unsupported" teaching and learning methodologies.
In the current post No Child Left Behind schooling environment where "evidence-based" instruction is paramount, experiential educators now have strong, research-based support for their pedagogical approaches. Perhaps even more intriguing, some of the findings also challenge or extend experiential approaches in potentially new and exciting ways.
For those that would like to learn more about these key findings and also explore their implications for both the theory and practice of experiential education, a pre-conference workshop will be offered at the 2010 AEE International conference in Montreal, Canada entitled, "Brain-Based Learning and Experiential Education: Theory Into Practice" led by Dr. Jay Roberts, Assistant Professor of Education at Earlham College. Jay has published several articles on the connections between research on brain function and experiential education. In addition, Jay also worked for nearly a decade with a leading brain-based academic enrichment program, Quantum Learning.
Participants will leave with a solid introduction to the key research findings relevant to experiential education and concrete applications for a variety of educational contexts.
For more information about the pre-conference, contact Jay Roberts, (765) 983-1327.
By Marc Levy, Director, Human Resource Mgmt &
Development, Owens Community College and Brian Capron,
Associate Director, UNC Charlotte - Venture Program; Co-Chairs
1. Please attend a preconference workshop that ALL program administrators can benefit from entitled, Practical Human Resource Management: Guidance for Program Administrators. Contact: Marc Levy, 567-661-2555, marc_levy@owens.edu; $75; Open to All; Wednesday, October 28, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
2. Experience-Based Training and Development (EBTD) does not necessarily equal "corporate training." Remember that across the globe, a single profession may go by more than one name.
Remember that across the globe, a single profession may go by more than one name.
Further, our choice of a name can affect the impression we give as to who is our target audience. For example, I try to steer AEE away from the use of the word "corporate" because I believe strongly that it restricts the breadth of target audiences served by EBTD. Thus, in the list of professional audiences, I'd prefer to change the definition to Organizational Training and Development and general Group Facilitation Professionals. This is much more generic, and captures those folks who work with organizations of all types, both small and large, both nonprofit and for-profit alike. Read more
