Experts Come In To Help Us See Out
When many of us went off to college, we had little perspective on “what we wanted to be” or careers beyond what we saw our parents or close relatives doing. Why didn’t our K-12 experiences help us to better see the possibilities? Why shouldn’t school help to give that perspective?
At Long-View, we decided to do that.
To outline this effort and belief, a few years ago we wrote a blog post titled Learning Within a Larger Ecosystem. It explains “we think of Long-View as a porous organization, and work to use and be part of the wider ecosystem of learning that exists around us.” Further, ”Learning is precipitated on openness, opportunity, connections, depth, and curiosity. At Long-View, we don’t wait for these to find us, but actively seek them out. Interacting with professionals and specialists helps us gain perspective as we learn about a high-level topic.” You can read that blog post to learn more about how we do that through field experiences, and you can see the post about Field Experience: Art Interpretation or the one about Field Experience: Data Visualization to understand how we strive to get learners out into the world.
But in this post, we want to tell you more about the experts who have come to us recently. Returning to our more regular cadence of hosting experts (after covid-related disruptions), last school year we welcomed many fascinating visitors both in person and virtually.
Dr. Jenna Moore told scientists about her “library” of worm specimens in the natural history museum in Hamburg.
Jonathan Meiburg, author of A Most Remarkable Creature: The Hidden Life of the World's Smartest Birds of Prey, taught us about caracaras and shared pictures of his adventures in South America studying them.
Clayton Stromberger, The University of Texas’ On-campus Coordinator for Shakespeare at Winedale Outreach, coached reader-writer thespians as they interpreted A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
William Magnuson, Associate Professor of Law at Texas A&M University, gave us an overview of his latest book, For Profit: The History of Corporations. From ancient Rome, to the East India Company, he told us about some of the earliest corporations, and he ended by talking about Toy R Us’s bankruptcy and the founding of Facebook by an individual in college.
Emily Lessing, PhD student from The University of Texas’ Department of Integrative Biology, shared with us her research about animal recognition. She presented this work previously at Science Under the Stars, one of our favorite outdoor lecture series.
Eric Hiatt, PhD candidate at The University of Texas in The Jackson School of Geosciences, inspired us with his research into groundwater on Mars and gave us captivating information about the field of geophysics. And he even came back to tell us more in Part 2.
Susan Hewlitt, Executive Director of the Dell Children’s Foundation, taught us about health and equity.
Dr. Adam Klivans, Professor at The University of Texas, helped us explore envy-free cake-cutting procedures, which has possible applications such as resource allocation, conflict resolution, and artificial intelligence (his area of specialty).
And perhaps the pinnacle of our interactions with professionals and specialists was Build Week 14: Get the Green Flag held in December.
As we invited our guests to share their research and expertise, we encouraged these specialists to present to our children as they would a room of adults. “Please don’t make a ‘kid-version’ of this; present your work as interesting as it is,” we would tell them. Moreover, our learners held these experts to high standards, asking complex questions and demonstrating connections and background knowledge beyond their years when doing so.
Our alumni even came back to share their knowledge and experiences with us.
Margot ‘23 and Rosemary ‘22 told us how they spend their Sundays— tutoring refugee families from Afghanistan.
Lia, Avery, and Makhai ‘22 shared hints, tips, and practices that they’ve discovered work well for reducing stress so far in their experience as high schoolers at St. Stephen’s.
These visitors and experts add a richness of experience and perspective beyond our walls for our learners (and teachers). And while we may not have a current learner grow up to be a scientist with a library of worms or an author of the next book on caracaras (but we just may), we most certainly will have learners who who have interests that are sparked and know there are many possibilities of what they might study or do. When experts come in, they remind us that the world is a fascinating place and nurture intellectual curiosity.
