Experience-Based Learning & Interdisciplinary Discovery

L!FE offers a variety of programs that cater to many different communities and populations with different needs and goals. Yet, the one thing that is the same between all of the programs is that they are all rooted in experience-based learning, the educational approach to teaching and learning the puts having real experiences as the focal point of the curriculum. We chose this as our backbone because we believe that this kind of learning makes a positive and lasting impact on our participants’ lives.

Experience-based learning begins with learning by doing. Before most children ever step foot in a school, they’ve already learned essential life skills: how to walk, how to speak, and so on. They learned most of this through careful observation of the world and people around them, and endless trial and error. These early stages of life are our first introduction to learning, and it happens without a lecture, worksheets, homework or the walls of a classroom. Learning by doing is our most natural way of learning. Celebrated educational philosopher, John Dewey writes, “Give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking; learning naturally results.” (Experience and Education, 1938) L!FE’s programs are about tapping into our innate ability to learn by doing in order to gain new skills that will help L!FE participants achieve their personal goals.

However, there is a small but important distinction between things we simply learned by doing and things that would become learning experiences. Things happen to us all the time and we learn important skills from these events, but at what point do the things that happen to us become an experience? For example, children learn to tie their shoelaces by doing, but how many of us can recall the exact experience? Surely, we learned to tie our laces, but did it ever really move beyond a life skill to become an experience? L!FE employs an experience-based learning model because we know that the most powerful learning happens when the act of learning moves beyond simply doing and becomes an experience. Author Aldous Huxley puts forth that, “Experience is not what happens to a man, its what a man does with what happens to him.” (Texts & Pretexts: An Anthology with Commentaries, 1933) L!FE’s programs are designed to help participants take what happens to them and turn it into a meaningful and transformative experience.

In the summer of 2016 L!FE hosted a six-day intensive workshop for students from University Prep Academy in Detroit, MI. At the end of the intensive, participants pitched their project proposals to a panel of professionals and business leaders from the community. Fueled by participants’ passion and interests these proposals wowed the panel, and have gone on beyond the L!FE intensive workshop to become fully realized projects. One student founded his own Detroit based theater company and got a play he wrote produced. Another student got invited to a business incubator to build her business plan for a fleet of mobile school buses providing computer access to homeless communities. For the students, the L!FE intensive workshop became a memorable experience not only because of the skills they learned but because they were able to apply these skills as they let their imaginations run wild with the possibilities of what could be created out of their ideas. This is what we find most exciting about the L!FE program: the endless possibilities that spring forth from the dreams, solutions, and ideas of our participants. These possibilities serve as launchpads for the students to pursue new adventures and more learning experiences. New experiences and adventures await around every corner, we’re ready to help participants find them together.