Learning expeditions meeting 24/10/25
Hi, look at me jumping of a metaphorical learning cliff again.
Today I was lucky enough to attend a presentation/meeting in the south australian department for education about an expedition based learning program that is experimenting with what will soon be worked into a new state curiculum built around students getting out of the classroom and learning by experiencing.
I came as a student presenter with 2 peers and 2 teachers from school. I presented with my classmates about what we are doing and how this program has changed our learning for the better. We where the only group in the section of the meeting we presented in who had a completly student led presentation; only with a teacher presenting the preplaning and how it ties into the reticulum because of course we didnt participate in that aspect of it. For some schools such as the Central York School or Kangaroo Island the lack of students was understandable because of how far away they are from Adelaide, however even the schools that did have students help present; it felt like they just tacked student anecdotes in near the end because it was mentioned in the what your meant to present of the email. I'm not saying that what others did was bad, really from an unbiased view what we did was different and possible to an extent not what was expected however I tend to think of my teachers as fairly incorporative of students into what we actually do and this just strengthened that view.
Holy shit this is kind of interesting, seeing the inner workings of the department. A note for any of my discussions about education, "The department" refers to my states education department. Being able to observe and also interact with a proper thing that exists and does stuff - something that has now become my view of what profesional progress in a field looks like. It also got me thinking about how we all learn, I personally learn by doing, and ive just spent a term and will spend the rest of this term learning by doing, by interviewing strangers and collating all of that data into how we present the history of our town in art form.
Also. There is almost certainly a group of people that have known this is such an obvious solution to engaging students with learning and preparing them for the modern world for so long but have only just gotten a chance to implement it a pilot program department wide. I am grateful for those people who dealt with the hardest part of making change, politics.
One of the things that has really stuck with me from the experience was that at the end they got us to write on these "exit tickets" they had a question on them, for the students it was "what was an 'aha' moment you had." And while I was thinking of what that was for me I had an 'aha' moment.
A big part of the program is getting experts in a field to help not only teach the students but give them experience with it. And the teacher does all that networking, finding and reaching out to people that know stuff which I find really hard. So, what I wrote down was that "teachers do all of the networking for experts, why don't they teach the students how to do that?"
This wasn't as much of an 'aha' moment as it should have been, rather a question that stemed from one. However upon a query of the teachers nearby it seemed that is something they have also thought of and are keen on implementing in the future.
I feel like I need to be abstract when talking about this, however I did not sign an nda nor was there any sign at any point that I could not talk about the meeting.
I am a student this will impact, and a student who will encourage this.