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ADVENTURE-BASED LEARNING
Adventure at RGS is focused on connecting students to nature, their community, and themselves. Students grow in their sense of place through a variety of activities such as free-play, fort-building, sensory awareness games, team-building, and hikes. This sense of place helps students gain confidence, understand ecological connections, and has been shown to increase the likelihood that they will grow into engaged citizens.
Our youngest students begin with simple exploration of the campus and nearby areas, while older students take on service learning projects, longer hikes, and overnight trips. Along the way, we take time to build community, learn how to overcome challenges, and connect with nature.
The focus of adventure-based learning is spending time outdoors exploring and taking appropriate risks in a “challenge by choice” environment, such as the sixth grade Ropes Course Day. These experiences develop students’ intrapersonal skills by providing students with the occasion to increase self-awareness, gain insight, think critically, accept responsibility, develop trust, and challenge personal boundaries. Other grades experience opportunities to practice these skills. For example, the Grandes trek around campus learning to navigate uneven terrain, climb slippery hills, design tree forts, and “rappel” down slopes. Second grade students create and care for nearby natural areas. In these spaces they process theme studies like Space and Pioneers with games and free flowing activities. In addition, fourth grade students gain a plethora of insight and self-awareness in their overnight trip to the Valles Caldera where they learn about ecosystems, sleep away from home, enjoy simple meals created together, explore, play and grow together in a safe, beautiful, and adventurous setting.
Time in adventure-based learning is designed to foster conversation, that arises from activities, in a way that students can engage in real life situational problem solving. While Pequenos are making simple relationships with nature and each other, the first graders are building a giant eagle’s nest from found objects. This nest becomes a place where other classes can explore, care for, and create their own activities. The program designs recreational activities for students to enhance interpersonal skills by practicing leadership skills, respect, build relationships, demonstrate empathy, and practice tolerance and trust. Each week students in all grade levels participate in hikes, challenges, or activities.
In addition, the program fosters a sense of community and reinforces our schools’ values of truthfulness, trustworthiness, responsibility, and students’ personal best. The learning-by-doing model of experiential education helps students to gain insight in a physically and emotionally safe school. Experiential education alongside Responsive Classroom simultaneously function to cultivate the schools’ goals of being a nurturing child-centered environment. Working tandemly these programs teach emotional skills (identifying feelings, delayed gratification, handling stress) to deal with life’s issues.
