Learning-In-Place

Weber seniors stepped out of the classroom and into a humanities lesson built for slow looking, careful attention, and big questions. This “Learning-in-Place” experience brought students to the Georgia Aquarium, not as a traditional field trip or a guided tour, but as a shared space designed for observation and questioning.

This experience was student-driven from the start. Members of the senior class approached Dr. Hannah Chapple, Dean of Studies, with a proposal for a day of experiential learning at the Georgia Aquarium connected to their study of literature. From there, students and Dr. Chapple workshopped the concept together until they landed on a shared set of texts and an essential question to guide the day. “What makes this experience so special is that it was born from the students’ curiosity, their desire to explore, and their willingness to be intellectual partners in the design of a meaningful learning experience,” Dr. Chapple said.

 

Before the visit, students grounded their thinking in two works: the opening chapters of Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and “Aquarium” by Katharine Ogle. Both texts invite readers to consider how identity is shaped through observation and description, including what it means to be labeled, interpreted, and understood through someone else’s language.

 

At the aquarium, students had to do something quite challenging in a space built for constant movement: stop. Each student selected a single exhibit and spent sustained time with it, paying attention not only to the animal but also to the choices shaping their experience. What does the signage emphasize? What feels absent? How do lighting and design influence what we are seeing? Instead of moving on once they’d “seen it,” students stayed with their chosen exhibit long enough to notice how the exhibit’s story was being shaped for them.

 

The experience was guided by an essential question that carried from page to place and back again: How do we come to understand ourselves through the ways we are described and observed by others? Next, students will bring their observations into a reflective essay that connects the aquarium experience to the two readings, and a creative project that asks them to choose between writing in the voice of an aquarium animal or crafting a second-person piece that places the reader behind the glass.

 

Thank you to the Dean of Studies, Dr. Hannah Chapple; English teacher, Dr. Emma Baughman; and the Dean of the Stan Kasten Academy of Sports Science and Management, Ms. Melissa Drish, for leading and supervising this valuable experience for our students.