Learning doesn't have to be boring

Resslin' Around, by Casey Ressler

Last week students were ice fishing, and next month they will be tying flies, all in the name of learning about the ecosystem. Earlier this year, students in the Mat-Su School District took part in a NASA mobile lab. Classrooms have gone to the Kenai Peninsula for the NASA lab there. Some classrooms will go the Seward SeaLife Center or Homer, where they will study marine life.

At Burchell High School, students can go outside, walk a few feet and take advantage of the country's largest observatory at a school. Educational opportunities abound for Valley students, and they aren't the opportunities you may be used to seeing as parents. Sure, they still use textbooks in the classroom, but hands-on learning is more and more prevalent.

I remember field trips to the roller rink at the end of school, or maybe a trip to the Alaska Zoo. My sister, who is younger than I am by a couple years, got to go to the Imaginarium, and that was big stuff then. A decade later, and the face of field trips has changed dramatically. Now, they are bigger and a lot more fun, but most importantly, they are more educational.

Perhaps the best aspect of these new educational opportunities is that learning is fun, and when learning is fun, students tend to want to do it more often. If a student has to go home, read for two hours in his or her astronomy book about a galaxy, and then write a report about it, learning isn't that all enjoyable. If that same student gets to go to the Stargate Observatory at Burchell High School, spend the same two hours looking through the eyepiece of a 12-foot-long telescope and peering directly into another world, the report is not only easier to write, but a whole lot more fun.

Using a hands-on approach to learning is a wonderful idea for teachers, and it also gets students looking in different directions when it comes time to picking a career.

A student who says she wants to be a biologist when she grows up may get turned off if all she associates with the profession is reading a thick textbook about topics such as cell division, photosynthesis and life cycles. But that same student may be spurred on to learning more if she gets the opportunity to study many of the same topics through a hands-on approach -- like watching the stages of a salmon's life in a classroom aquarium or studying the ecosystem through ice fishing and fly-tying classes.

A student who says he wants to become an engineer when he grows up may get bored if all he has to do is read and participate in drafting classes. But maybe he also gets to "build" a jetliner with the NASA mobile lab, and learns how much fun aerospace engineering really can be.

Traditional learning is still important, but new teaching and learning opportunities are becoming more important. If just one student takes what he or she learns from the ice fishing trips and decides to become a biologist, the program was worth it. If just one student becomes an aerospace engineer because of what he or she learned at the NASA lab, the field trip was worth it.

These new opportunities are not only getting children interested in education and learning, they are also providing the next generation with a wealth of knowledge -- even if they don't realize it at the time.

Casey Ressler (valleylife@frontiersman.com) is the Valley Life editor.