COVER S TOR Y
When deciding how to grade the boats his students
created for the project inspired by Refugee, Mr.
Mailey experimented with a theory he had read about
many times before but had never tried. “I wanted to
experiment with creating a rubric as a class,” he said.
“Students jumped in right away and told me exactly
what their boats should be tested on: design, carrying
capacity, speed, and whether it overcame obstacles. They
decided the fastest should get the highest grade.” Both
Mr. Mailey and the students knew intuitively and agreed
upon grading what made the most sense: essentially,
how well the boat they built did what it was built to do.
Mr. Tickle had a similar answer when asked how he
evaluated his students’ performance in the Mini
Economy unit. “The evaluation for this project is more
self-evaluative for the students. If they’re making
money, they must be doing something right. If they’re
not, they need to look at what they could be doing
better. We build in a lot of opportunities for reflection.”
Mr. Miller (Chief Learning Officer at AEE) may have put
it best when he said, “[The evaluation] is the best part.
The way that you evaluate students that are learning
experientially is that they do the thing. And if they do it
well, they learned what you’re trying to teach them. If
they don’t, then there’s real-time, kinesthetic feedback
happening for that student.
Steward is as committed as ever to its curriculum of
rigorous academics in the traditional classroom sense.
But as the world outside of Steward is changing and
evolving at a faster rate than ever, it’s critical that our
students are also taught how to apply the lessons they
learn in the classroom to the real world in an authentic
way, rather than just theoretically. Not only will they
make better mental connections and retain more of
what they have learned, they will also better learn to
think and act as members of a community as they are
exposed to people and experiences they wouldn’t be
normally.
As Ms. Jamieson said, “Students at Steward are
incredibly talented and they have wonderful ideas.
Learning how to take your idea and put it into action
is an important skill to have in the world. And you
cannot design or innovate if you don’t understand what
the problems are, what your resources are, and all the
different people that can be a part of that solution.”
ALUMNI IN ACTION:
THE “FABRIC” OF AN EXPERIENTIAL EDUCATION
When talks first began at Steward about
formally prioritizing experiential, hands-on
learning in the curriculum, Corbin Orgain
‘96 got goosebumps. “Goosebumps and
jazz hands,” she said. “I knew we were on to
something that was going to be cool.”
It was then that a lightbulb went off in her
head. “If this excites me so much,” she said,
“why don’t I go out and give this a try? If
we’re serious about experiential learning here
at Steward, some of us need to get out there
and see what that is going to look like.”
It wasn’t long before Mrs. Orgain asked fellow
Steward alum Michael Maszaros ‘99 if she
could be a summer intern at his Colonial
Heights-based interior design firm, Cabin
Creek Interiors. Mrs. Orgain has known Mr.
Maszaros since he was in kindergarten at
Steward in 1986 alongside her little brother.
“Michael said ‘yes’ right away,” she said. “It
was too easy!”
Mrs. Orgain began a three-week design
internship at Cabin Creek this past July. She
has always been passionate about decorating,
so getting the chance to do everything from
organize fabric samples to meet with design
reps was a dream come true for her.
that the process of student assessment for
internships needs to be completely different
from traditional classroom grading. “How
do you figure out a way to give the student a
grade without also altering the experience?”
she asked herself. “If I were required to write
about my experience [at Cabin Creek] every
day, I might have been sitting there logging
every little thing I did in my head as opposed
to being present in the moment and then
reflecting in a way that felt right to me.”
If Mr. Maszaros were grading his intern, she
would have passed with flying colors. “I think
being a teacher made her go into student
mode,” he said. “She was very inquisitive and
incredibly open-minded about learning our
processes.”
Mrs. Orgain believes that immersive learning
experiences like her internship at Cabin Creek
are essential for educators in order to hone
their skills. “Steward made me a lifelong
learner,” she said. “They instilled in me a love
of learning, so I’ve never been one to sit back
and stop learning. But I also think you have
to [keep learning] to be a good teacher. You
have to be paying attention to how you learn,
because it makes you more aware of how
other people learn.”
One of Mrs. Orgain’s biggest takeaways from
the experiential learning experience was
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