Experience is its own reward, and one school administrator in Greenwich Village is out to prove that when students take what they’ve learned in the classroom and apply it in the real world, those lessons that stick for a lifetime.
“We all took chemistry in high school,” says Dr. David Liebmann, headmaster of the soon-to-open Greenwich Village High School. “What if instead of learning it in the classroom, you go down to the water treatment plant and analyze samples?”
The new school opens its doors next fall – it’s currently admitting its first class of freshmen – and the school plans to focus on a different kind of education, called experiential learning.
Experiential learning is based on the notion that students are more likely to retain what they learn if they practice it in the real world. It is a break from the more traditional classroom-only style of teaching.
After a solid grounding in the basics, some class time is traded in for onsite experimentation and education. Other examples Liebmann cites are going to Chinatown to practice Mandarin, or a trip down to the subway to see kinetic energy in action. As students observe a train pulling into a station they can see that a train’s brakes need to exert the same amount of energy (excluding contributions from gravity, air pressure, and friction, of course) to bring the cars to a stop as is needed to get it rolling again.
The idea has Greenwich Village High School parents excited. Aimee Bell, a mother of two who lives nearby and serves as one of the founding board members of the school, says that Liebmann’s plan to have teens focus on experiential education is exactly what the board was looking for when selecting its first headmaster. She also acknowledges that, this being a new private high school in New York City, Liebmann faces high expectations from parents who demand much for their money.
Bell remains confident, thinking often of the school’s motto: “Be Kind, Work Hard, Take Risks.” She says that Liebmann’s vision of incorporating “learning by doing” into the curriculum is an embodiment of that motto. In fact it was one of the key factors that drove the board of trustees to select him to head the school.
As for the potential pupil’s reaction, Christian Johnson, a freshman at the High School for Math, Science, and Engineering at City College on the Upper West Side, thinks the idea is a good one. Greenwich Village High School would allow Christian to apply, and is currently accepting applications from students all over New York City.
“It sounds pretty cool,” he says. “It’d be a lot more exciting.”
Christian does admit that his parents might need some convincing that the quality of education meets or exceeds what he’s getting at his current school.
Greenwich Village High School’s planned curriculum is a leap forward in high school curriculum planning says Thomas James, provost of Teachers College at Columbia University and an expert on experiential learning. But he agrees one challenge Liebmann will likely face is parents who grew up with the traditional model of book and classroom learning.
James says that other hardships educators often face when enacting an experiential model are ambivalent school boards who want to see test scores demonstrating the validity of the theory, and other administrators who also want confirmation before breaking with the norm. The cost may also be prohibitive, as experiential schools need to pay for transport, and, sometimes, additional insurance, as kids are regularly removed from school grounds.
In a country that places increasing emphasis on book learning and technology, though, he thinks some experiential learning is essential for producing well-rounded students. The learning that takes place outside school walls is often worth many hours of classroom work.
“This is something that’s missing in the learning of children,” says Dr. James.
In an article for the Spring ’08 issue of Independent School Magazine, in an article titled “Living It!,” Liebmann describes some of the experiential learning programs taking place around the country. In the article he goes on to cite research demonstrating that people learn better when actively engaging a subject, rather than passively absorbing it.
Liebmann also says that learning through experience is more likely to lead to lasting memories of high school, long after the specifics of the periodic table may have begun to fade. In his past experience as the director of programs at Shady Side Academy in Pennsylvania, Liebmann noticed that his former students were quicker to remember the service learning, which is the combination of classroom work and community service, and other experiential programs above even that school’s respected curriculum.
Liebmann says that the most common criticism of experiential education is that it is watered down. He says that the opposite is true, as experiential education requires even more of students, challenging them to have a solid understanding of material before going to connect it to the world outside school walls.
The headmaster does admit that this new technique of teaching will require a passionate and dedicated brand of teenager. This doesn’t concern him, in his experience the students tend to outperform expectations in this kind of environment.
“Give kids the responsibility and they will rise to it,” he says.
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