The Joy of Discovery
There’s a simple joy to watching a kid figure something out. Picture the face of an elementary schooler who just found out that baking soda and vinegar make a big foamy mess when mixed together. That open-mouthed, excited moment of realization and discovery is what education is all about! Adventure-Based Learning (ABL) makes intentional facilitation of those moments, and we’ve brought it to the Anderson Academy here at Crossnore.
Anderson Academy and the APE Program
Anderson Academy operates as a new trauma-informed charter school on our Winston-Salem campus. Members of the Experiential Learning team are supporting these students through the new Adventure Physical Education (APE) program. This work is in collaboration with Coach Jeremy Baxter, the Physical Education teacher at Anderson Academy, who has graciously offered up some of his class periods for ABL material.
We hold all of our classes outside, creating an engaging and unique learning environment that also lets us use Crossnore’s beautiful natural spaces for future nature-based activities.
Learning Through Development & Feedback
Developing, compiling, and executing this kind of programming has been a learning experience for our team as well. We’ve been digging into tons of different activity and facilitation resources and recording lots of feedback from the students, all in an effort to best tailor our work to their needs. Elementary schoolers have the gift of unfiltered honesty, which makes for really impactful moments of reflection from relatively simple activities.
Games That Inspire Connection and Fun
Peek-A-Who with Second Graders
For example, a recent hit with the 2nd graders was “Peek-A-Who”, a name guessing game played by opposing teams. Each team chooses one member to walk forward, with a tarp held up between the two teams. The tarp is dropped, and whichever person says the name of the other first earns a point for their team.
This makes for a lot of excited commotion and accidental combining of names, which the students (and teachers!) found hilarious. When asked, students said that working together was “fun, because my teammates were nice to me,” and that they enjoyed how they “had to choose who to go…together”. For 2nd graders, that’s amazing!
Walk Stop with Fourth Graders
Another example is our wonderful 4th graders completing an instruction-flipping game called “Walk Stop”. During this game, they have to pay close attention to the prompts given by the facilitator. Halfway through the game, the instructions swap meanings (the word “Walk” now means “Stop,” etc.), and the students have to align their cognitive functioning with their instinct. The students had a blast rising to the challenge as they laughed their way through, making the “I’m thinking really hard” face that kids often do.
The Value of Adventure-Based Learning
There’s great precedent for adventure-based Physical Education–with organizations like Project Adventure leading the way–and a strong body of research supporting the effectiveness of this approach. It’s not hard to imagine why it’s so effective, especially for kids who have experienced hard things.
Sometimes, for kids who go through hard things, competitive activity can turn into murky territory where they’re acting out the really big hurts that they’re holding. However, when we utilize the social web of connection and collaboration that emerges in an adventure-based learning environment, we can utilize competition to help our students be better through each other, rather than better than.
Introducing the FLIGHT Model
One of the components that has been most exciting about our early work with Anderson Academy has been developing the FLIGHT Model–the experiential framework created by Andrew Florence and Rashawn Meekins. (We couldn’t miss the opportunity to create an aeronautical reference with the name!)
The model is built around the Experiential Learning Cycle, and each of the letters represents a step within a lesson plan:
- F – First, am I safe? Do I belong?
- L – Look, listen, and learn
- I – Ideas!
- G – Get started – Give it a try
- H – How did it go? What did I learn?
- T – Time to try again…
This model is in early development, and we can’t wait to see where our students and teachers take it!
Looking Ahead: Gymnasium Renovation and Future Adventures
Also in the process of development is the renovation of the gymnasium in Winston-Salem. In the spring of 2025, our Miracle Heights Adventures team entered the gymnasium and disassembled the entire climbing wall to save it for reinstallation after the renovation. Mike Fischesser has already provided early support and sponsorship to help us rebuild the wall! We are thrilled to see the new learning opportunities it will create for our adventure-based PE program.
With all of these exciting components taking shape at the Anderson Academy, we’re feeling really optimistic. This work is the culmination of a ton of research, preparation, experience, and good intention. Long-term, we’d like this to be a highlight of the Anderson Academy educational experience, and one that stands out as a uniquely beneficial program. Experiential Learning is crucially important at this developmental stage for our students, and it helps grow healthy curiosity, critical thinking, and resilience in kids. That’s why we think it’s so important: because it works! Rest assured, as this program grows, changes, and flourishes, we’ll be thoroughly enjoying the work it takes to do so.
