Teachering Experiential Learning and Multiple Intelligences

Teaching Experiential Learning and Multiple Intelligences


What a week it has been! Last Monday, we made the long and arduous trek west from Kampala to Bushenyi for our long-awaited teacher training workshop in environmental education. After our week in Entebbe visiting schools and preparing workshop supplies, we were really excited!


Bushenyi is a tiny village, but the Anglican Church runs a community centre there and we were able to gather the 22 teachers who attended (we expected 30) in relative comfort. Local women prepared our meals each day (Meg will tell you more about this) and our days went from 7:30 a.m. to about 8:30 p.m. if the electricity lasted that long. Then we would sleep across the road at the tiny Eureka Motel following "bucket showers" from a jerry can of warm water.


Tracy, the education coordinator for JGI Uganda, had prepared a thorough and comprehensive schedule that included us presenting general teaching strategies as well as environmental education strategies. During breaks (if the electricity was working) we would show DVD's such as Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees, Planet Earth series, and PACE videos which highlight environmental success stories from across Africa.


The main components of the workshop that I was responsible for were:
- the rationale for environmental education
- experiential education techniques
- multiple intelligences theory and practice
- assiting with e.e. lesson plan development


As with any workshop or conference, people tend to spend the first day assessing each other, start getting to know each other on the second day, and begin bonding thereafter. It was like this with our workshop. The 18 men and 4 women were keen teachers and very welcoming to us.


For me, I felt they really started to come out of their shells once we started the experiential education techniques. I think everyone learns well by "doing" and this group opened right up with this style of teaching / learning. It is tricky for them to utilize experiential learning in their classes when they have 60 or more students, tiny rooms, and almost no resources. But, we hope we gave them a few techniques that they can implement to increase learning. Their favourite was the "Dress an Insect" activity to teach insect parts when you don't have access to supplies or living insects. Johnson, a grade 6/7 teacher, volunteered to be the insect and everyone got really into adding found materials to him to "turn him into" an insect with all the correct parts.

An experinetial ed. strategy that is fairly widely used in North America, but not used here at all is the Solo Sit or Solo Walk. This technique doesn't teach facts, but instead allows learners to build a connection between themselves and the environment, and begin forming environmental values. When we did a solo sit activity outside with the Ugandan teachers, it was interesting to see their different reactions. Some of them sat quietly and noticed things like bird nests in trees, sounds in the air, or beautiful flowers around them. Others couldn't stand the quiet and chatted, checked their cell phones (there are no land phone lines here) or squirmed until it was over.


Later in the day we introduced multiple intelligences theory. This was the first time that any of the teachers had heard of this concept. What it entails is the idea that a person's intelligence should not be measured as smart / not smart, but as how they are smart. There are 8 intelligences: naturalistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily/kinisthetic, musical/rhymthic, verbal/linguistic. Each person will have a different profile of intelligences, e.g. someone could strong musically, kinisthetically, and interpersonally. A person's M.I. profile influences the way in which they learn. Traditional teaching has focussed solely on verbal / linguistic and logical / mathematical. Typically lecturing, board notes, and textbook learning.

M.I. theory influences teaching and learning by encouraging teachers to teach in ways that suit the different intelligences and learning styles, and allow the students to show their learning in ways that work with their M.I. Initially, the Ugandan teachers found this a lot to digest and weren't sure what it meant in terms of their teaching and their very large classes. After each of them underwent their own M.I. survey and figured out their own profile, there was a lot more understanding and several teachers began to advocate for using this concept in their lesson planning. I think they went home with a message that using M.I. creates diversity in one's teaching methods and ensures that no learner is left behind.

It was really cool to see one of the groups create a song as part of their e.e. lesson plan the next day and another group created an experiential lesson using real flowers collected from the wild. What I loved most about this teaching was seeing teachers get excited about the new ideas. It was very humbling though to be reminded through their questions and anecdotes that teaching in Ugandan schools is very challenging. These teachers pursue this career for the love of it.

More stories later.

Alie