Some things are best learned through experiences and those experiences can be turned into an education model.
“It's learning through doing. It's learning through experience, and then reflecting on that experience, relating it to other areas of your life, and then testing it out again, and just continually trying,” said Bryn Lottig. Lottig is an educator, speaker, author, coach, and consultant focused on experiential learning.
She said this modality of learning is like the difference between showing a child a YouTube video of how to ride a bike versus handing them the bike and letting them figure it out.
“You don't learn how to ride a bike by riding the bike perfectly the first time. You learn it by failing and evaluating what went well, what didn't go well, what do you want to try different the next time. It's this constant experience that is informing your brain on how to do something new,” explained Lottig.
Lottig said she had an adverse childhood and that things like attending summer camps, studying abroad in college, and doing an Outward Bound trip both set her up for success and inspired her to become an educator.
“It is what I believe set me apart from other members of my family that were not able to thrive and were not able to go on to be successful and succumbed to generational cycles of substance abuse and mental illness. It is how I believe I broke the cycle,” said Lottig.
Lottig wrote a book that came out in April called “No Child Left Inside: Transforming the Next Generation Through Experiential Learning”.
She says its “part memoir and part prescriptive nonfiction.” You can learn more about her book and her work on her website.
Lottig will be talking about experiential learning at this month’s Science on Tap Minocqua.
“It might not be the same way that people were taught. We can all learn new things and create new neural pathways. It is a much more holistic way of teaching, and I think it's way more fun,” said Lottig.
Science on Tap is this Thursday at 6:30 p.m. at Rocky Reef Brewing Company.
