MUCH of what I learned from my formal education I learned from within the confines of a classroom. I grew up in one of the major cities in the Philippines and the elementary and high school I went to was located at the city’s center. Most of the campus, from the playground to the classrooms, is concrete.

I claim to know how to garden, but the knowledge I have are from the books I read as a child, and from teacher demonstrations. I know that the best type of soil is loam. It is darker in color, as seen in a picture from the book I borrowed from the library. Until now, I have yet to be successful in keeping a plant alive.

This kind of traditional teaching approach was proven in many studies to be not the most effective. For students to fully understand or demonstrate understanding on a certain topic, concept or subject, students need to be engaged and participate in their own learning (Hackett, 2016, Winsett, et. al., 2016).

The concept of experiential learning was first developed by John Dewey, Kurt Lewin and Jean Piaget through their own experiential work, but was later on developed as a unique perspective on learning and development by David Kolb in 1984 (Sternberg & Zhang, 2000). The emphasis is on the word, “experiential” highlighting the significance of experience differentiating it from other learning approaches. Learning through experience is a “process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (Kolb, 1984 as cited by Gross & Rutland, 2017).

The challenge in teaching three International Baccalaureate (IB) courses is to find a good combination of maximizing student learning based on an extensive course content, preparing the students toward achieving assessment objectives, and motivating them to maintain their sanity until they finish their senior year. For us to have an out-of-syllabus activity, we may have to forego several hours of class time, without guarantee that the learnings from this activity can suffice what were missed.

Since I started teaching IB, I have had plans for exposure educational/exposure trips that may provide my students opportunities for experiential learning that are related to the courses I teach, and the advocacies on agricultural development alleviation, poverty & human dignity, and social responsibility.

The new syllabus of IB Business Management introduced new concepts like for-profit and not-for-profit social enterprises, and old concepts that has more emphasis such as ethics and social responsibility. I also found support from our IB/CAS coordinator where links to the CAS Program made this trip more concrete.

Our students, accompanied by several of us teachers, were able to visit the Gawad Kalinga Enchanted Farm (GKEF) some 200 kilometers away from where our school is, a six-hour trip from Baguio City last September 2017.

GKEF is the main flagship project of Gawad Kalinga (GK). They transformed this wide parcel of idle land in Bulacan, a province north of the capital, where insurgents used to linger, into a thriving self-sufficient community, initially providing them access to decent housing.

After which, social enterprises were established within the Enchanted Farm by residents themselves and GK volunteers, where they utilize the abundant resources available there and create wealth for themselves, for their families and for their community. The end goal of GKEF and GK is to take these families out of poverty, through their own means and become self-sufficient and regain their human dignity.

The students were able to meet volunteers of GK who come from various parts of the world, listening to their testimonials on how GK changed their lives, and how they are going to replicate the GK model in their own countries. They met social entrepreneurs in the Enchanted Farm and witnessed first-hand the production process of these social enterprises.

They were able to immerse themselves in various farm activities, like waking up early in the morning to plant rice in the fields, make fertilizer from a combination of chicken dung and loam soil, and plant bamboo.

Learning from experience requires four capabilities, namely: (1) an openness and willingness to involve oneself in new experiences (concrete experience); (2) observational and reflective skills to view these new experiences from a variety of perspectives (reflective observation); (3) analytical abilities to integrate ideas and concepts created from their observations (abstract conceptualization); and (4) decision-making and problem-solving skills to put these new ideas and concepts in practice (active experimentation) (Kolb, 1984 as cited by Lin, et. al., 2016).

Without explicitly discussing these capabilities to the students or trying to pry these capabilities out from deep within each of these students’ characters, they came out freely and naturally. The realizations and lessons that the students derived from this two-day activity are priceless, and to hear them talk about their experience among themselves and to the other students in school is invaluable.

Aside from providing them an avenue for experiential learning, I had other “hidden” agenda when I was planning this trip. First, to convince at least one of them to write their Internal Assessments (IA) about a social enterprise, where they can conduct a research on an existing problem and provide possible solutions for the enterprise to solve this problem. Secondly, to increase awareness of this type of firms, so that more people will be encouraged to establish social enterprises and provide opportunities for the poor and the marginalized in our society; and, lastly, to spark a spirit of volunteerism in them, so they can be able to have that heart of compassion, and be catalysts for change when they become leaders of the future.

There were several who did their IA on a social enterprise. The “Happiness Club”, an extracurricular organization was initiated by two students primarily to conduct community service activities locally. These students are now more aware of the poverty and the inequality in our society now. Small, baby steps toward the greater goal of changing humanity.

Truly priceless lessons from the Enchanted Farm, where no walls stand to prevent anyone from being creative, innovative and excellent toward the goal of wealth, success and greatness. I am hopeful for this world’s future because this next generation of leaders who have sharp minds and caring hearts will transform the world, a world where opportunities are provided equally to all, a world where everybody lives with dignity, a world where no one is left out.

Note: This piece was published in the EARCOS Journal Fall 2018 Edition.