Experiential Learning

Experiential Education isn’t all about experience. Sometimes it’s about a new setting that makes a student more willing to learn.

At low tide one of my students asked how the pier was built.  We in Rockland have a wonderful history of Working Waterfront that offers much and varied maritime architecture.  This particular pier was formed with a crib built against pilings and filled with loose rocks.  With that as our motivation we set off rowing to look at different pier construction in the south end.

The kids noticed, almost instantly, the next pier over at Rockland Marine was built of well formed granite blocks.  They were fascinated as I explained the island granite industry that provided so much of the building blocks of this country.  As we rowed over to a cribbed pier that has long ago collapsed we were lucky enough to meet a gentleman on an adjoining dock who remembered from his childhood that this had been Steam Boat Pier.  He remembered train tracks going right out to the end of it and the trains unloading grain, wood, and stone on to waiting boats.  It its day they had been steamboats.

Not one of us on that boat was anything less than fascinated at what we were learning.  It’s all written in a book somewhere, I guess.  How much more interesting is it to be there, to touch the stones, to discover, and then, when your interest is peaked, to be taught.