Experiential Education: Challenging History
In an essay on Juneteenth, scholar Annette Gordon-Reed argues that our national history perpetuates an “extremely narrow construction of Blackness,” which marginalizes the voices and experiences of Black Americans. She believes that this history ignores voices to fulfill “our current needs and desires (usually to feel good about ourselves),” while sacrificing “actual history.” With this paradigm so deeply imbedded into national thought, how can we work to uncover a more inclusive and holistic vision of history?
One answer seems to lie in experiential education. These programs, with ties to service learning and global studies, encourage students to seek out traditionally underrepresented perspectives and experiences, bringing students “closer to the truth,” as Ms. Miriam Pina, Director of Global Studies, explained in an interview with the Review. In 2016, Head of School Mr. Dominic Randolph told the National Association of Independent Schools that these trips give students a sense of purpose and “[make] our students better scholars, better citizens, better thinkers, and better humans."
Director of Outdoor Education Mr. Jake Crowley-Delman stressed the importance of emphasizing marginalized stories during student travel. He will lead Sacred Lands: Exploring the Past, Present, and Future of Utah’s Bears Ears over March break, where students will backpack through the canyons of Bears Ears, Utah, and explore the rich history of its indigenous communities. Through this, students will actively connect with an extraordinary accomplishment of Native American culture and explore the land-use debates associated with it. To bring this important experience to the classroom, he and Upper School science teacher Dr. Rachel Cox are teaching an elective called Thinking About Limits, which delves into ongoing debates about indigenous land protection in areas such as Utah's Bears Ears National Monument. Mr. Crowley-Delman hopes that this personal engagement will add a new and more informed dimension to an ongoing history that has been misrepresented and “overlooked in American classrooms.”
Upper School history teacher Dr. Marc Antone and Assistant Director of Community Engagement Ms. Ciara Everett echo the goal of uplifting marginalized voices, specifically through storytelling. During Dr. Antone’s March break trip, Crossing Borders: California-Mexico, students will hear from NGOs and homeland security officials about the U.S.-Mexico border crisis.“We don’t have a lot of places in our curriculum to understand the Latin American genre outside of a few electives. I mean, most ninth graders will remember NAFTA, but this is deepening your understanding of what NAFTA means to the human and geographic landscape,” he notes. “It’s really different to see a picture of the border rather than see the waves crashing on razor wire. You’re seeing families trying to communicate across the fence… that’s a really different experience.”
Ms. Everett, a leader of the February trip Sowing the Seeds: Exploring the History of Savannah, Sapelo Island, and the Gullah Geechee People, emphasized how her trip encouraged students to “disrupt narratives that don’t tell the full picture.” Ms. Everett explains that “interacting with a diverse set of people encouraged students to think through lenses they weren’t accustomed to using.” This thinking sharpened students’ critical thinking skills and pushed them to deconstruct the biases and exclusions present in their existing understanding of American history.
Ms. Piña further discussed the importance of engaging with communities to facilitate a more nuanced and multifaceted perspective. In her course, Riverdale in Senegal: Tradition, Expression, and Diaspora in West Africa, students will interact with Senegalese locals to explore culture and stories. As an example, she discussed that students would meet with a Senegalese professor to understand African perspectives on the slave trade. Riverdale in Peru: Spirit of the Andes, a course that will unfortunately no longer run, was intended to focus on sustainability and small businesses, specifically interacting with indigenous groups. She argued that for a global issue like climate change and sustainability, we “need to understand what other people have done to deal with that issue and what their priorities are,” to ameliorate the issue together. She hopes that these diverse interactions will equip students with “intangible, life-changing skills” that facilitate personal growth.
By providing students with these experiences, Ms. Pina believes that students will reflect on their trips and bring their new understandings to the classroom, thus enriching curriculum and discussion because, although Riverdale constantly seeks to include a more diverse set of voices in the curriculum, ultimately “our curriculum is as rich as the richness of our faculty and students.” Ms. Pina hopes that all these global studies experiences will ultimately teach students that there are “an infinity of ways of being or doing, and you can choose what you feel you should be.”
