Experiential Learning: Farm, Ropes Course, Travel and More!

OK.

Yeah.

We can Claire and I can just fill in on the RCI stuff. I've got some Harkness. OK, we got it.

Or we got we. We have 24 people already joining goodness, OK?

So what Claire for so that you know that I explained to your friends?

We will I. I'm going to look at the chat and then I will moderate questions after you all have spoken.

OK, got it.

And and then, that's up to the four of you who wants to answer the question. I I won't point it at anyone, but I'll just be monitoring that if that makes sense to you.

OK.

Alright, let's see.

I have to remember how to watch this thing you guys? Oh my God.

We have to do this every Sunday like how do I not know every time?

What's the Max number of participants we've had in a session?

Ooh good question Josh, uh.

Over 200

Wow.

Yeah.

but but this is the first one for this subject matter, so I think it's exciting.

I go back to lunch.

Sorry, Mrs Ding is texting me, hold on.

Where is this no lunch?

Hey.

We're not. We're not live right.

I think we might be.

Was.

Technical difficulties.

Hi everyone, I hope you can hear us, sorry.

Hello everybody, this is my name is Bobby Cloninger. I'm a senior and we're here to introduce experiential education. Please let us know in the chat if you can hear us.

We're so excited to introduce you to this aspect of the Lawrenceville School.

Feel free to just type in, type in the chat and let us know.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry my microphone doesn't seem to be working. I wanted to thank everyone.

Am I acting to everyone?

Tie tie tie.

Can you guys hear me properly now?

Oh sorry, thank you all so much for joining this evening. My name is Megan Donaldson. I work in the admission office at Lawrenceville and really appreciate you joining us. We have some spectacular students tonight who are all seniors.

In their in their last year at the school, but they all have experienced experiential learning at Lawrenceville. And I again I apologize for the technical issues, but I just want to thank you all for joining us, and I wanted to let each of them tell little little bit about themselves. And then we are happy to answer any questions afterwards. So Bobby want to continue on.

Yes I would.

Or just do you want to lead the way?

Josh, go ahead.

Can you hear me?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

OK, so my name is Josh. I live in Colorado. I'm a fifth form student which is a senior in the boys lower dorm. I'm a prefect. I'm formerly in the Cleve house. This is my 4th year at Lawrenceville, so I've kind of been here for the entire journey and I'm really excited to talk to you guys about all of the opportunities you can have at Lawrenceville with experiential learning. I've been a part of the Big Red Farm on RCI, which is a ropes course instructor. I've done a Harkness travel trip during my time.

Here and I'm a Hutchins scholar.

Hello, my name is Bobby Cloninger. I'm also a senior. I'm a prefect in the Woodhull House, which is one of the one of the six circle or sophomore junior boys dorms. I've also been here for four years and you know around here. Experience experiential. Education wise I'm one of the head RC eyes or head ropes course instructors and I have been on a Harkness trip as well.

Yep.

Hi everyone, can you hear me?

Great, my name is Claire. I am actually a sophomore, a third former in McAllen House. I am from Princeton, NJ and in terms of involvement I'm an RCI and I've been a part of our leadership program since freshman year.

Gotta test you.

Cascia can you hear oh we lost her?

OK.

Soum

Yeah, can you hear me now?

Yes.

here's what what we talked about earlier. Let's just talk about a little bit about your experiences on campus with the farm and the ropes Course and Harkness travel otes. Yeah, we got you back, do you? Let's yes, we can thank you, Tasha.

OK perfect yeah hi. Hi everyone, I'm tessia. I'm a senior in the rental. Tell us right now but I was a Stanley Stanley girl for the last two years. I'm a border from West Orange, NJ so about an hour north from Lawrenceville and in terms of experiential learning, my freshman year, the summer after my freshman year, I was able to go on a hike this whole trip to Tanzania. So that was pretty exciting. And then I'm also Hutchins color, which is our science scholar program. And so I was able to do search over the last couple of years with that as well.

Yeah, I'm sure we'll talk more about that coming up.

Oh all, this is great. So what I would say is Josh Bobbie Claire, Tasha just go. You know one by want. Give give us the highlights of you know these cool things that you've been able to do on campus at Lawrenceville and abroad, wherever you've been.

Yeah, I can start we. I guess we can go in the order that we introduce ourselves, so I'll start with the Big Red Farm so I've never so you can engage with a bigger farm and in many different ways during your time at Lawrenceville, some students choose to work on the farm to fulfill their athletic commitment, which is something that you have to get fulfilled every term that you're at Lawrenceville. What I did is I actually was an intern on the farm, a paid intern over the summer. It was incredible experience. I got to learn.

Obviously farming techniques and like how to work on a farm, and I think the most valuable part of that experience, though, was I ought to learn like what happens behind the scenes both at our school, but also in communities to make food, prepare food, kind of feed our communities and not only that, how to do that in sustainable way. So I think there's a lot of really important connections there, both things that we can use at Lawrenceville and things that we can use in the greater world. And I think that's kind of what the point of experiential learning is learning through doing.

And also doing things that can apply both to your time in high school. But more importantly the greater world. I can let Bobby talk about the ropes course, but I'll talk a little bit about Harkness travel as a student at Lawrenceville, you have the opportunity to travel both internationally and domestic two places all across the world, and these trips typically happen over spring break and over summer vacation. These trips you apply for as a student and what's really awesome is that Lawrenceville is committed to getting all of their students to go on at least one Harkness travel trip during their time at the school.

And even better if you're a student that's on financial aid, Lawrenceville is committed to matching that aid in as part of your heart and travel package. Hardness travel lets you of course visit different parts of the world. I visited Williamson, WV, so not too far it was a domestic trip, but it was a great trip and they serve different purposes. Some can be academic, like. I know students who've gone to Greece and studied math kind of in the homeland of the subject. I guess you could say I did a Harkness travel trip in West Virginia that was service based, so we went in the West Virginia community.

And we spent about a week and a half there and the point of it was to learn and see how the West Virginia community, which in typical years has been very cold dependent, is working to becoming more sustainable and self sustaining. Which was a really interesting thing to see. Taught me a lot about community building and building sustainability practices. So these are the things that I can bring back with me when I come back to school.

So once again, I'm Bobby. I've spent a lot of time working on the ropes course. Lawrenceville is very fortunate to have its its own ropes course on campus and as ropes course instructors, which is about a group of 30 or so students from sophomore to their senior years. Who will work and operate the ropes course, which includes high high ropes elements. We have three different features. The wall, which is a standard climbing wall, a dangle duo which is a a team climb where you have two students climbing up a sink or a swing ladder.

As well as a tower which is more of a a combination of everything as well as we, we facilitate these lower ropes elements, so one unique part of our of our Lawrenceville curriculum is every fall. Their freshman year students will come in and they will attend freshman orientation, which is run by the Ropes course instructors. The RC eyes and for freshman students who are coming from all over the globe, many of whom have never met another human being. At at Lawrenceville, they have no, no no one. This is their opportunity to meet someone and.

Form these new groups of friends for them to fall back on throughout throughout the year and it's their their first introduction to camp to campus so.

They will the road course instructor will lead them through first some simple name games before moving on to more complex team building activities and the groups that they're the freshman students are in. Are there humanities groups so they get to know the other people in there, their English or their history classes and then they will move on for the entirety of their freshman year with these people developing these bonds, which allows them in Harkness based Harkness. Discussions to to really get to know each other or not be afraid to to jump right in and either refute or build on someone's ideas. And it makes for the most.

Fluid conversation.

One thing we talked a lot about on the ropes courses is challenged by choice. So that means Lawrence Laurentians and the RC eyes are looking to get the the different participating students to step out of their comfort zone and into their into their challenge zone. Or we also call it the learning zone where they, they'll they'll embrace embrace the different activities and push themselves to do something they've never done before. Whether that's just trying to lower a hula hoop to the ground or or stacking three bodies on top of each other in a freestanding freestanding tower, which is, you know, a really incredible feat to see dump.

To see Don.

It's a, it's a great. It's a great opportunity to take these skills that we apply. You know, both in the classroom and then out on the ropes course and meld them together to to strengthen our community.

Claire

OK, great. So unlike Josh Tessier Bobby, I haven't spent as much time at Lawrenceville because I'm sophomore. But I wanna say that I spent a fair amount of time being apart of the actor leadership program. So I came into freshman year, not really knowing what kind of sport I was doing. I'm not very much in the athletic person. I like theater like arts like playing the piano and poetry and humanities.

But Kim and not quite sure what to do. When I saw this program ask Cheryl, I'll try it out and it ended up being like one of the most.

I don't know, it just really changed the direction in which I was going at Lawrenceville.

So Agile leadership is one of those sports that Lawrenceville offers, and it's pretty much going up to the ropes course every day. Learning how to tighten, not learning how to do a correct setup but laying, climbing, hiking, biking. So like you're really exploring a lot of different parts of.

Engagement with nature.

And they came in. Not really sure of what we were doing, but at the end I think what really stood out to me was how welcoming everyone was because we had a big group of seniors.

As a freshman, I wasn't really sure what kind of connections I was going to make. There's sort of this perception in high school that we're going to have a divide between grades, but it ended up actually being like a really fun, dynamic, lively group that we had, and that sort of transfers to like the RCS as well. I think both Bobby and Josh can agree when we say that like there's this really cool sort of dynamic going on between every single person in each grade.

So for me it was mostly the bonds that were formed and the connections that I made that really made me want to continue this at Lawrenceville. So I ended up doing climbing team in the winter term, which is the sport that the actor leadership program offers in the winter and then ended up going back to after leadership in the spring.

And so currently among the climbing team, which is also part of our experiential learning program, and we were actually in interscholastic sport right now. So we're going to different competitions. Going to Rockville climbing, trying different routes, bouldering.

And as much fun as it all sounds, I think most importantly for me is the connections that you make in the people that you meet within the process.

Green

Yeah, it's little bit Claire was saying. I think one of the best parts of experiential learning is this sort of commodity that you get to build with people in other grades. Like for example, I went on a Harkness travel trip my freshman year and I was the only freshman on the trip. So I was I was a little intimidated going in but it became when I was on the trip. I, you know made some of my closest friends to date there. You know, from every every grade and it was just incredible to see how this sort of experience of hands on learning can do that for you. So just a little bit about my trip similar to Josh.

It was a service based trip, so I traveled to Katanga, which is a village in Tanzania, and I was living at an all girls home there and all girls home in school and so basically we were just very involved in in the school's way of life. You know we were learning from them and how they operate, so helping out with some of their like educational curricula and that kind of thing. And then also all of their food is self self produced there. So we helped out with some of the agricultural practices and took back some of that for Lawrenceville as well. So that was very.

Very fun for us to do and so I think the biggest thing with the with the harness travel trips is that we're going in with this intent of learning and learning from that community. It's very immersive and you come back with just a lot of connections, both with your peers, and then also the people that you met there. So for example, because mine was at an all girls home, I still keep in contact with some of the girls at the school and I, you know, I hear about some of the things that they're doing even now, so.

I I would say it's just, it just becomes a pretty pivotal part of your experience here, and I think that's just part of the nature of these kinds of programs.

That's.

Hopefully I'm not going to blast everybody out with my audio this time. Thank you guys so much you gave such amazing synopsis of what you have been able to experience in your four years work. In the case of Claire in your year and a half at Lawrenceville, thank you so much. There was a question about what jobs you can do on the farm. Josh, could you answer that one?

So while I was there, I was there for two weeks and my experience was a little bit different because I was an intern. So I worked like I was a paid intern and I worked like 39 hours a week and I would basically do anything from planting to maintaining crops to picking food off of off of crops, to working with livestock. I helped. I helped work with some livestock.

Other than that?

What was really cool was that my culminating experience at the end of the two week period is Lawrenceville actually ran a farmers market, so I spent a lot of time.

Standing at the farmers market booth and this was a farmers market that had produced that I had helped grow in like earlier. Part of my time there. And not only that, it was open to the entire community so I could actually tangibly see, like how my work and how the work that is done by students making me at the school the entire year. Basically, except in the winter, of course, how that kind of contributes to building up the surrounding Lawrenceville and Greater Central Jersey community. Through this farmers market.

Another question.

Guys is.

How how do you go through the process of going on one of our Harkness travel programs? How how is that open to anybody? I mean, I know the answer, but I want to hear it from you in terms of how you apply to go on one of these programs and how it works.

Dasia

Yeah, absolutely. So the answer is yes. Anyone can apply freshman through senior year.

The application I think goes up in the fall, right? That's correct. And then you're applying for a trip either in the spring or the summer, and so you can apply to up to three programs, and you can sort of rank your preferences on which one you'd like to go on, and then, like Josh mentioned earlier, every student is pretty much guaranteed a trip during their time here. So at some point if you wanna go on a trip, you will be able to, and so because of that, that's sort of how that application process works. Yeah, that's pretty much it.

I'm trying to see what else we have.

Talk a little bit well, the you know the ropes courses right on campus you don't have to walk too far to get there, but tell me something funny that's happened on the ropes course. I mean, nobody hurt themselves, right?

No, but when it's something that you've learned and you you've all spoken so well about it, but with something that interesting that that has happened. You know, just in terms of team building or getting to know each other better through that.

Either either story. So one of the things that come well, this is something that's reoccurring, but I think it'd be kind of cool to share because I think we've talked about how the ropes courses you used Bobby did a really great job talking about with the value of the ropes courses in terms of experiential learning to enhance.

Our students connectivity in terms of the classroom environment like students take the things that we work on at the ropes course in terms of team building, cooperation, collaboration, they take these skills and they directly apply it to all aspects of their life at Lawrenceville. But I think another really cool example, also kind of funny of what happens at the ropes courses every year. Sophomores who are taking I caps, which is inquiries and chemical and physical sciences yet to do a lab at the ropes course and this is the pendulum lab.

In this lab is pretty famous because they do their lab in the classroom and they kind of study the physics behind our pendulum work. That's the point of the lab, but then they get to go up to the ropes course and you can if you want to obviously challenge by choice, you can get hooked up to the ropes course and get pulled up by your fellow classmates, and then you can literally swing like a pendulum from the Josh, which is the name of our ropes course. I remember one year even I think this is right, but I think head head of school Murray even did it too so.

It's a, it's a really cool experience. It's kind of fun to see your best friends kind of swinging in the sky like a pendulum.

Yeah, and to add on to that. So we did a lot this year or last term and I guess what was a little strange about it was because I had done it before. It was interesting to see how my fellow students would approach this, 'cause they've never been on the ropes course. Didn't get a freshman orientation.

In person it was all over zoom, so seeing their surprise and then having people volunteer to go up and not swing one time they had to swing multiple times to get multiple trials and multiple data tests. So hearing it's kind of amusing to see.

Their reactions and how they react to like being put in this challenging zone, but also the support that you get from your friends, like everyone was cheering them on, like hooping and hollering. So yeah, it's a it's a fun time, with Josh said.

Those are the best answers. You guys, thank you so much. So here's a question.

That came up, but this is a hard one to answer. What is our most popular travel program or destination I? I mean we know it changes every year and unfortunately we haven't been able to do it for the past.

Year and a half ish.

When I when I speak to applicants I.

The favorite place that everyone wants to go is Japan I. I don't think that's been on the list recently, but do you know in your four years 'cause you guys have been on campus full time for more than one year? What would you say? A favorite trip is?

Anyone know?

I think one of the one of the most popular Harkness travel program trips is led by Doctor Clark, who's a staff or a faculty member of our science department and everyone every once in awhile. Whether whether it's annually, I'm not sure he'll lead a trip to to Ecuador, I believe, and that's an opportunity for for him and of the other faculty members and students he's with to traverse through the the Ecuadorian jungle and and visit the cities there. But what's what's really unique and cool about that experience is it's very science based, so I I didn't go on this trip.

What I've heard from other students and heard, heard from around campus is that a lot of it is. Doctor Clark will go through and he'll pick out all these different species and and it's a lot of learning about the community there. And you know, sometimes they'll come back. Having made unique scientific discoveries. Whether that's a new species in the wild or witness something from a phenomenon that just hasn't occurred in such a long time. And I think that is definitely one of our most popular trips.

Thanks Bobby, that's awesome Tasha. Could you answer this question?

In terms of when we talked about Harkness travel for you, how was our Harkness teaching method incorporated? When you're on the road, you know we're not. We're not on campus.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the sort of like discussion based element of it is still kind of universal wherever you are. So I know in Tanzania, for example, we had like kind of daily seminars. I guess where we would learn about different agricultural practices. Or like we had Swahili lessons every day. So it was sort of like a similar thing. You know, you never really escaped the hardness table, even if there isn't an actual people there and so.

You know you kind of experience that same sort of like collaborative learning and like learning from both the teacher and the peers that you're with. Then also every day we would sort of recap, you know, come together, like on highs and lows of the day, or things that we learn.

So it's a a big part of that learning. Is that conversational element of it, and building off of each others experiences.

I I don't see any more questions in the chat. If there's anyone who's listening to us if they have more questions, please contribute and we're happy to answer your questions.

I.

Uh, I'm trying to think what else we can we can tell everybody that they don't already know we we've had a lot of these informational sessions and I think that you know the way that you all speak is such a testament to the different programs trying to think.

Anything else that you guys feel is important to share with perhaps future Laurentians?

Did we have an opportunity to talk about the Hutchins Scholar program?

We have not talked about that. Go for it Bobby.

I I cannot personally speak to it, but I know we have Members on the panel that have participated.

Whoever is able to grab that district.

Yeah, so Josh and I actually.

Yeah, Josh and I actually were in the same sort of program for Hutchins, so just to clarify, Hutchins is our science scholar programs. We have different scholar programs for history, English, science, and environmental science disciplines, and so with Hutchins specifically, I can talk a little bit about you. Apply your sophomore year if you're very interested in doing research in science, and so sophomore year and junior year, you sort of learn basic lab techniques and like different basic fundamentals of the research that you might end up doing.

And then the summer after your junior year, you're sort of partnered with the lab. That's that you're interested in doing the research based on. So. Josh and I both did research in conjunction with a lot at Stanford and Oncology Lab, and we were doing some molecular genetics work with fruit flies. And, you know, working with their genomes and things, it was. It was pretty crazy stuff, and it's a pretty incredible experience, especially at a high school level, to be able to do graduate level research with sort of pioneers in the field.

Josh, I don't know if you want to speak more.

But experience.

Yeah, the experience was really cool. Just to kind of add on to what tests he has said we were in the lab for two weeks during our junior summer doing work. Molecular biology work. Essentially this is like college level work that's done in professional labs, so for me as someone who hopes to pursue a similar study in college at the next level and to work in labs in the future, it was an incredible experience to be able to say that I've done that.

Basically in my junior year, to say that I have tangible lab experience working with procedures, working with like complex scientific techniques, and then not only that, but then amassing our results and putting it together in a poster and then being able to use scientific language to present those findings to our school community, which is what testing I did. I thought that that was probably the most incredible part of the experience, and there were other trips as well. I peers in the Hudson Scholar program that traveled to Scotland to study botany and then other peers did.

Independent projects as part of Jefferson University and then I know Peciu almost did a quantum physics lab at Princeton University, which seemed pretty cool.

Yeah it fell through 'cause of COVID but.

Essentially, Dr. Fox, who's sort of our lead research person on campus. She'll sort of pair you with a lab based on your interest, so I was interested in quantum computing at the time of my application, and so she found this lab at Princeton for me. So basically the opportunities are kind of endless and.

Yeah, there's a lot of room for finding your own sort of niche passion in science.

Something that I would ask you all to explain, because obviously you're talking about doing so many different things. But can you talk a little bit about how you fit it all in in a day? Because as we know it, Lawrenceville a typical day is not 8:00 AM to 3:00 PM. But how do you do all the things that interests you?

And and still make it work.

I think for me the first thing I could say is.

I think there's two things I'd have to say on that topic. I think the first thing to say for any student who's considering Lawrenceville. Any applicant is that if there's something that you want to do at Lawrence, so it's there for you, and I think that's the most important thing to just know that in one way or another, whether it be any club, any opportunity, anything that you might want to pursue during your time. Here, the school makes sure that you can apply to be part of it. Be a part of it, or, if not like, connect you with a teacher who is just as interested in that for you, and you can.

Start that initiative yourself, but then with that being said, there are like a certain number of hours in every day, and there's also school commitments, their athletic commitments, there's your clubs, and there's all these awesome experiential learning programs that enhance your Lawrenceville experience. More than anything, I think the biggest thing that I've learned just through four years here is just you got to stay organized and you gotta stay on top of it. But as long as what you're doing is something that you're inherently passionate about, I think I found that things seem to workout because you get a lot of joy from doing.

Things that you're passionate about, and while there are as much as that you can do in a day, I think all the things that Bobby, myself, Claire, and Tessia do are things that we all really enjoy doing during our time here.

But Bobby or Claire do you? Do you want to talk to that just because it's hard to explain that not everything happens at the same time, so you don't have to make those hard choices, right? I mean, you, you can still do a lot of the things that you like to do. Not saying you can do it all, but you know how do you make it work and and not have to make super hard decisions that you don't have to give something up that you care about.

Yes, so I say that between things that I'm doing RCI preseason we have in our preseason to train to learn how to introduce the freshman to the school. So that's at the beginning of the school year and then we have sort of a few weeks that we're helping out with welcoming freshmen, welcoming new students, but slowly, that kind of dies down. And then you move on to your other commitments and for me that's moving on to another portion of the active leadership program.

And now I'm currently a part of the climbing program, so I think Florenceville really helps you out by organizing different things at different times. So if you were interested in let's say, the bigger farm, but you also wanted to try the climbing team, you could do one in the winter and do one in the spring.

But also going back to what Josh said, I think there are so many things that you can do at Lawrenceville and a lot of it is also about discovery. So coming in this new student.

Try out everything, see what you enjoy, and then you stick to it and you commit to it and then from there you can really expand what you're doing. For example, I'm actually currently part of a Harkness travel program, so we're planning to go to Scotland and the UK over the summer, and so this is actually for theatre at Lawrenceville. It's not really service or science based, so you can also find ways to.

Combine your passions, like traveling, but also immersing yourself in theater and acting and exploring different parts of the Laurentian experience.

Bobby, I know you have something to say about this too.

I, I think there's there's definitely a number number of ways to get involved in manage everything. I think Lawrenceville does a great job at putting some of the the largest, most culminating experiences. Those Harkness travel programs in the summertime and in in the spring break. I think one of one thing we have not really touched on that's really crucial to experiential education at Lawrenceville is that we have our own school camp that that happens every summer. And, you know this. This also kind of combines in a little bit with community services. Lawrenceville as a community service requirement. It's really.

It's really an amazing way to give back to the community here right around Trenton in New Jersey.

But for students who may be looking to, you know they for me. You know, if I have ropes course on on Sunday or I'm looking to to play an interscholastic sport or continue doing some sort of the arts, and I want to, you know, also engage with the community. That's kind of looking to to other opportunities to come to Lawrenceville and use my time. And, you know, one way would be the school camp that would be, you know, working for two weeks in the summer as as a camp counselor first for students from the Trenton area who really wouldn't have the opportunity otherwise to attend a summer camp and kind of have one of those experiences.

And that's pretty pretty unique to Lawrenceville.

Those are all what amazing answers and and thank you so much for sharing everything that you've done. You guys have had a lot of really cool experiences not to put up a non experiential learning, but thank you so much for sharing this. I think there haven't been any other questions so it is it's Sunday evening excuse me.

Well, no, we're we're we're good. Thank you guys so much for your help and thank you for everyone who joined us this evening. We really appreciate it and I want to thank Josh and Bobby and Claire and Tasha for taking time out of the out of their busy.

Sunday evening to tell us a little bit more about Lawrenceville and all the other opportunities that we have. So thank you all so much and if you have any other questions.

Everyone has my information, so feel free to send me an email and I'm happy to help in any way.

Thank you guys so much.

Happy Sunday.

So.

Bye bye.