Emergent learning is an educational model that says children learn best when they're following the scent of their own excitement and enthusiasm, through interest-driven activities stemming from their real and ever-changing social and physical environment. Emergent learning encourages flexibility, self-awareness, perception, self-regulation, reflection, articulation, and other important learning skills. Emergent learning teaches kids how to learn, not just what to learn.
Emergent learning happens best when children get to interact with many people with a wide range of skills. In interdependent communities such as a traditional village, children watch adults use all sorts of skills and tools in service of the common welfare. As they watch, children begin to imagine themselves also having a place in a broader web of community and filling certain social functions/roles. As they model themselves after adults in the community, they begin to feel a natural desire to master the tools of their culture (yes, including literacy and math!). Thus, we believe a child will learn most effectively when learning is grounded in and motivated by the web of relationships of a real human community. Because of this, EBSS devotes a huge amount of energy toward building authentic community.
Instead of a rigid curriculum, emergent learning unfolds along many branching paths. The specific route a child takes on their journey is first and foremost guided by their own curiosity and aptitudes, and it is further shaped by external factors such as the seasons, windfalls, sudden events, visitors, et cetera.
Here is an example of how emergent learning is applied to meeting standard academic goals- let's think about math and cooking.
At EBSS, we approach math through several lenses -- cooking, carpentry, and game design, among other things. In this example we'll examine cooking. The fall harvest is in full swing, and the kids decide that day that they want to make something to share. They adapt or follow a recipe, requiring the use of measurements, to which they look to the adults (and each-other) for explanation. In order to scale up the recipe to feed the right number of people, they have to use both counting and fractions/multiplication. This leaves room for multiple levels of learning appropriate to multiple ages and abilities. Cooking, especially baking, is also a form of chemistry, and has a wide range of learning opportunities within the sciences. Working together, the kids make their recipe, measuring and scaling and working together. Perhaps they want to write it down (literacy) in a handmade recipe book (the crafting of which could be a whole project, with its own lessons, in itself).
Now, imagine what they make is actually really tasty! So they decide they want to try to sell it. They then decide to calculate the cost of each ingredient, an opportunity to consider the labor and natural forces involved in its creation (science, history, economics, math). Then they take into account the amount of labor put in (division and multiplication) and figure out a per-item price (fractions). This item is then sold at the Gill Tract Farm Stand, and the kids decide what to do with the money they made.
All this from one cooking project!
To give kids and families an idea of what kinds of activities we get up to, here's an alphabetical list of some of the things we did in 2020:
- Bird identification
- Board games
- Bridge building
- Butterfly observation
- Camouflage
- Cardboard slides
- Carpentry
- Collaging
- Cooking
- Creek exploration
- DnD/Roleplaying games
- Drawing
- Fairy-house making
- Fire-making
- First aid
- Flower crown making
- Foam archery games
- Free-play
- Friction fire
- Gardening
- Knife carving/whittling
- Knot-tying
- Land-tending
- Looming
- Making marble runs
- Map-making/cartography
- Mushroom spore prints
- Music-making
- Pottery/clay sculpting
- Plant identification
- Pumpkin carving
- Reading
- Salamander hunting
- Scavenger hunting
- Shelter-making
- Silent sits
- Situational awareness training & games
- Stair building
- Stealth/sneaking
- Soccer
- Tag
- Target archery
- Tea mixing and making
- Tight-rope walking
- Trash pick-up
- Tracking
- Turkey observation
- Wand making
- Wildgathering
- Wreath making
- Wood chipping paths
- Yoga