all right so we’ve been sitting here for
a little while so I just want everyone
to take a minute and enjoy something
cute I it’s a lion cub a picture that I
took when I was living in Kenya actually
and um talk a little bit about how I got
there and then what I learned being
there so I’m an army brat West Point is
actually the longest that I’ve ever been
in any one place good spot you know
really enjoying my three years four
years here we were living in Korea
following my dad from Germany in 2008
and he was actually approved to retire
to get out of the army we were gonna
move back to our hometown in
Pennsylvania and the army decided that
that wasn’t what we needed to do at that
time and it ended up being an incredible
experience just like the places that I’d
lived before he got an email from an old
friend of his that knew that he had a
certain skill set that they needed in
Kenya to become the new defense attache
there so we went to to DC he got some
trained up for about six months and then
we moved over to Kenya and it was unlike
any place that I had what ever lived
before foreign countries give you an
experience that you’re not gonna find
anywhere in the United States obviously
but Kenya was something different in
that all of the systems that I had gone
grown up with that I had learned to love
didn’t really exist and by that I mean
the grocery stores for example something
that everyone takes completely for
granted in the United States or in
Germany or in Korea they’re not the same
in a lot of places they don’t exist
you buy food from street vendors there
was really only one western style style
grocery store in all of Nairobi and so
you get used to that and then another
big change involved the school that I
went to there and overseas in Germany in
Korea I went to Department of Defense
schools that were modeled pretty much
after an education that you would
receive in the and
United States and there was no
Department of Defense school in Kenya
because there isn’t a huge DoD presence
and so I went to a school that was
founded by the embassy the American and
Canadian embassies in partnership called
the international school of Kenya now it
was founded by Americans and Canadians
but my peers were only about thirty
percent American otherwise my friends
were Nigerian South African Pakistani
Japanese Korean and then from all over
Europe and living in that kind of
environment and learning in that kind of
environment you just naturally become
acclimated to diversity just because
it’s there and it’s in your face a
hundred percent of the time and if you
aren’t able to deal with that well
there’s not really not an alternative
and so an obvious thing to talk about is
how living there
you know made me better at working with
people of diverse cultures but it’s
really not something that can be
replicated easily in the United States
and so what’s great about these forms is
I actually learned something in a talk
that just happened it’s not necessarily
about this specific situation that I was
in it’s about setting the right
conditions for me to learn in the way
that’s best for me and that was best for
all of my peers and so what that looked
like
in Kenya is that every aspect of our
education was tied together through a
culminating activity that every class
took and took on every year and so my
eighth grade year I was there what that
looked like was a trip of about a week
and a half to the Masai Mara and so some
of these pictures I’m down there holding
a cattle a group of cattle with some
Masai farmers and then they gave us the
typical Masai blankets and we wore that
while we were there and being in that
environment was something that you know
you can’t you can’t train for you can’t
really learn how that how to experience
that until you just are in it and the
way it tied into our education
was that everything that we did weeding
up to that trip was somehow related so
in our English classes we read Masai
literature and then other East African
literature that gave us a better
understanding of the culture that we
were about to experience in our science
classes we learned about how the Rift
Valley formed and why the Masai lived
where they did and how they moved around
and how they farmed and how their cattle
grazed and then for history courses we
learned about how the Masai culture has
changed over the years and how the
effects of the British colonization and
the changes governments has affected
that culture and all of those things are
not super relevant to my life now but
what I did learn is that when you’re in
an experience you need to be able to
draw on something from all aspects of
your education to get through that and
so looking at it now I kind of see the
what I was going through is a much more
natural progression of learning and
something that’s not really replicated
that well in the United States the way I
see learning is you start out with
reading it’s just you take knowledge
that someone else has has already
acquired and you make it your own and
you read and you read and you read and
that’s how you learn at a fundamental
level and then the next level you go and
you start to teach that back out to
other people now you’re not really
creating something new necessarily
you’re just taking what you’ve learned
through reading and passing that back
out and you can look at it from either
the teacher side or the student side in
a way every time you take a test you’re
essentially teaching or proving to that
teacher that you know what’s going on
but beyond that you get to a level where
you are creating things you are really
being something new and you’re taking
your experiences and what you’ve learned
through the reading and the teaching
portions and you’re applying that back
out to a real-life situation so in Kenya
that’s what we did
we spent about three months and they
time leading up to this trip doing all
of the reading and teaching we took
tests on the geology of the region and
we wrote papers on the books that we
read but none of that really mattered
until we actually got there and were
able to create something new out of this
experience that we had and so the
conditions that we were that we were in
for that trip were a very organic way of
compiling all of the inorganic pieces of
our education up to that point and so
what I’m what I’d like to present here
is essentially that the solution to
education and the problems where people
say that we might be falling behind in
math or in science or in literature it’s
not that we need to do more time reading
and teaching and testing and proving to
the world that we know these things we
need to do more time creating through
experiences so I want to talk about an
analogy with just thinking about how
books come to be authors I can’t think
of any ever that just write a book and
have never read anything before in their
life I don’t think it’s possible
actually and so they always do start
with that fundamental level of reading
and after that they go through and get
an education another way doing the tests
the teaching part but then the
experiences that they have in their
lifetime come back to that book and
creating something new and then they go
and the cycle repeats and someone else
reads that and teaches it and then they
create something new and so in Kenya
that’s really what I learned is that the
reading comes first you learn the things
that you need to learn and then you
teach them back out but then you create
something new through an experience and
then you’ve actually had a full
educational experience thank you you
a little while so I just want everyone
to take a minute and enjoy something
cute I it’s a lion cub a picture that I
took when I was living in Kenya actually
and um talk a little bit about how I got
there and then what I learned being
there so I’m an army brat West Point is
actually the longest that I’ve ever been
in any one place good spot you know
really enjoying my three years four
years here we were living in Korea
following my dad from Germany in 2008
and he was actually approved to retire
to get out of the army we were gonna
move back to our hometown in
Pennsylvania and the army decided that
that wasn’t what we needed to do at that
time and it ended up being an incredible
experience just like the places that I’d
lived before he got an email from an old
friend of his that knew that he had a
certain skill set that they needed in
Kenya to become the new defense attache
there so we went to to DC he got some
trained up for about six months and then
we moved over to Kenya and it was unlike
any place that I had what ever lived
before foreign countries give you an
experience that you’re not gonna find
anywhere in the United States obviously
but Kenya was something different in
that all of the systems that I had gone
grown up with that I had learned to love
didn’t really exist and by that I mean
the grocery stores for example something
that everyone takes completely for
granted in the United States or in
Germany or in Korea they’re not the same
in a lot of places they don’t exist
you buy food from street vendors there
was really only one western style style
grocery store in all of Nairobi and so
you get used to that and then another
big change involved the school that I
went to there and overseas in Germany in
Korea I went to Department of Defense
schools that were modeled pretty much
after an education that you would
receive in the and
United States and there was no
Department of Defense school in Kenya
because there isn’t a huge DoD presence
and so I went to a school that was
founded by the embassy the American and
Canadian embassies in partnership called
the international school of Kenya now it
was founded by Americans and Canadians
but my peers were only about thirty
percent American otherwise my friends
were Nigerian South African Pakistani
Japanese Korean and then from all over
Europe and living in that kind of
environment and learning in that kind of
environment you just naturally become
acclimated to diversity just because
it’s there and it’s in your face a
hundred percent of the time and if you
aren’t able to deal with that well
there’s not really not an alternative
and so an obvious thing to talk about is
how living there
you know made me better at working with
people of diverse cultures but it’s
really not something that can be
replicated easily in the United States
and so what’s great about these forms is
I actually learned something in a talk
that just happened it’s not necessarily
about this specific situation that I was
in it’s about setting the right
conditions for me to learn in the way
that’s best for me and that was best for
all of my peers and so what that looked
like
in Kenya is that every aspect of our
education was tied together through a
culminating activity that every class
took and took on every year and so my
eighth grade year I was there what that
looked like was a trip of about a week
and a half to the Masai Mara and so some
of these pictures I’m down there holding
a cattle a group of cattle with some
Masai farmers and then they gave us the
typical Masai blankets and we wore that
while we were there and being in that
environment was something that you know
you can’t you can’t train for you can’t
really learn how that how to experience
that until you just are in it and the
way it tied into our education
was that everything that we did weeding
up to that trip was somehow related so
in our English classes we read Masai
literature and then other East African
literature that gave us a better
understanding of the culture that we
were about to experience in our science
classes we learned about how the Rift
Valley formed and why the Masai lived
where they did and how they moved around
and how they farmed and how their cattle
grazed and then for history courses we
learned about how the Masai culture has
changed over the years and how the
effects of the British colonization and
the changes governments has affected
that culture and all of those things are
not super relevant to my life now but
what I did learn is that when you’re in
an experience you need to be able to
draw on something from all aspects of
your education to get through that and
so looking at it now I kind of see the
what I was going through is a much more
natural progression of learning and
something that’s not really replicated
that well in the United States the way I
see learning is you start out with
reading it’s just you take knowledge
that someone else has has already
acquired and you make it your own and
you read and you read and you read and
that’s how you learn at a fundamental
level and then the next level you go and
you start to teach that back out to
other people now you’re not really
creating something new necessarily
you’re just taking what you’ve learned
through reading and passing that back
out and you can look at it from either
the teacher side or the student side in
a way every time you take a test you’re
essentially teaching or proving to that
teacher that you know what’s going on
but beyond that you get to a level where
you are creating things you are really
being something new and you’re taking
your experiences and what you’ve learned
through the reading and the teaching
portions and you’re applying that back
out to a real-life situation so in Kenya
that’s what we did
we spent about three months and they
time leading up to this trip doing all
of the reading and teaching we took
tests on the geology of the region and
we wrote papers on the books that we
read but none of that really mattered
until we actually got there and were
able to create something new out of this
experience that we had and so the
conditions that we were that we were in
for that trip were a very organic way of
compiling all of the inorganic pieces of
our education up to that point and so
what I’m what I’d like to present here
is essentially that the solution to
education and the problems where people
say that we might be falling behind in
math or in science or in literature it’s
not that we need to do more time reading
and teaching and testing and proving to
the world that we know these things we
need to do more time creating through
experiences so I want to talk about an
analogy with just thinking about how
books come to be authors I can’t think
of any ever that just write a book and
have never read anything before in their
life I don’t think it’s possible
actually and so they always do start
with that fundamental level of reading
and after that they go through and get
an education another way doing the tests
the teaching part but then the
experiences that they have in their
lifetime come back to that book and
creating something new and then they go
and the cycle repeats and someone else
reads that and teaches it and then they
create something new and so in Kenya
that’s really what I learned is that the
reading comes first you learn the things
that you need to learn and then you
teach them back out but then you create
something new through an experience and
then you’ve actually had a full
educational experience thank you you
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