Every Moment Is a Teaching Moment

By David Torcoletti, Head, Junior Program

Exploration has a deep belief that only knowing a student “from the neck up” misses many opportunities for teaching and learning. The phrase “teaching the whole child” gets used a lot these days, but few schools and educational programs are in a position to fully take advantage of what those words imply. At Exploration, we believe that educating the head, the heart, and the hand can best be accomplished by having the same dedicated educators who teach in the classroom also live in the dormitories, lead trips, and coach sports and activities.

When one teacher sees his or her students in the morning as they get ready to start the day, teaches some of them in class, goes with them to the ball field, runs a fun activity for them in the afternoon, takes them on a trip, sits with them for a meal, and helps them quiet down for the night, that teacher sees the full spectrum of those young people, not merely the part that learns math or English. Educators, psychologists, and researchers have learned that “feeling known” in this way by adults in the learning community is one of the most important indicators of success for students. At Exploration, we know that it can be life changing.

For the most part, Exploration teachers are current college and graduate students. Some of our teachers are professionals who started with Exploration when they were in college, and learned while with us that they were educators for life. That is a joy to behold, and we feel fortunate to have influenced their life’s calling, and it also has the added benefit of allowing them to stay with us for many summers. But the majority of our teachers are also students, deeply engaged with learning—albeit at a very high level. This means that our faculty members serve as role models even more significantly than traditional teachers do. Mature college students, who in many ways are swimming with the same cultural forces as our students, can break down barriers quickly and make meaningful, relatable connections between ideas and the world in which our students live. With our approach, students get to see bright, well-rounded staff members, able to teach in the classroom and coach on the field. Students see these same role models dance unselfconsciously and have informal discussions about a variety of topics and issues. At Explo, we constantly remind our staff members that when they can be seen or heard by students, they are teaching.

One of the additional benefits to hiring and training talented young people to teach our courses is that we can train them in Explo’s method from the very beginning. Most of our year-round employees, summer administrators, and supervisors are or have been professional teachers, so we are very familiar with what a classroom (and a dormitory and an athletic field) needs to look and feel like. And we use our extensive experience to train and prepare our smart and passionate staff for the rigors and uniqueness of Exploration. Our project-based, hands-on style of teaching and learning emphasizes engagement, participation, and discovery. The process of teaching problem solving, and developing and using our imaginations, inspires students to become enthusiastic lifetime learners, and downplays the emphasis on specific content and facts. Content-based learning is something that almost every school provides in abundance, and it is important. But there are so few opportunities to do the essential work of exploring and discovering. Exploration provides students with the important opportunity to connect (or re-connect) with why we learn in the first place: to be more fully ourselves, and therefore, more fully human.

If we don’t know the range of things in which we may have a deep interest and an innate capability, we will be unable to know ourselves fully. The world may be denied committed, passionate, highly talented artists, scientists, writers, or social activists, all because students didn’t explore the possibilities with caring guides. After 30 years of Exploration, we have found that some of the very best guides for this process come from teachers of our students’ own generation, ahead of them in years and experience, but still of their time.