Welcome to our Spring 2020 Fieldwork course website.
Fieldwork Practicum in Rockbridge County Schools
Fieldwork in Expeditionary Learning and Teaching is a community-based course focused on civic engagement in schools, giving VMI cadets opportunities to apply learning outside the classroom, and develop new rhetorical skills while working with experts and community members to explore local needs and concerns. In Spring of 2020, VMI students enjoyed participating in Rockbridge County classrooms for their Fieldwork experience. To synthesize their learning in the course, students both observed, investigated and designed learning inquiries with local K-12 students as part of Rockbridge County’s Project-Based Learning Initiative.
Our course is grounded in 10 principles of Outward Bound’s Expeditionary Learning (EL Ed, see below), such as the primacy of self discovery, collaboration and competition, and service, as well as 7 ‘Gold Standard’ elements for Project-based learning, originating with John Dewey’s experiential philosophies (PBL Website). In turn, our community fieldwork partnerships will practice the following principles:
These combined EL and PBL elements shaped best practices for our learning inquiries with local students, but also with our peers in the VMI classroom, allowing us to reassess how learning is, as Dewey claimed, ‘a moving force’ both continuous and interactive, both individual and social, that requires us to share and develop our academic, personal and civic habits and commitments. To that end, our aims are to
- build a strong connection to the world
- develop high standards for learning
- assess and understand what we’ve learned via reflection
- foster an ethics of practice and service
- connect with teachers’ passion for learning and alertness to opportunity
- support students responsibility for their own learning
- create a spirit of adventure and challenge
- make room for in-depth study, fieldwork, interdisciplinary connections
- enable teacher and student leadership, teamwork, organization
- generate new roles for learners—collaborator, apprentice, explorer, expert
Adapted from Key Expeditionary Learning Design Principles, Guide for Planning a Learning Expedition (Outward Bound, 1998)
Classroom Partners
After spending time observing Rockbridge County teacher cohorts design and discuss project-based units at an October PBL training, MAJ Stephanie Hodde met with Assistant Superintendent Haywood Hand, and Tim Martino, Director of K-12 Curriculum and Instruction to match cadets with teachers in three schools–Central Elementary, Maury River Middle School and Rockbridge County High School. We had many teachers offer, but VMI schedules can be tricky. We were lucky to make matches and work with the following classrooms:
Rockbridge County High School
Kiersten Donahue, Environmental Science
Davis Simms, Psychology and English
Mary Holton, 9th Grade English
Sarah Leadbetter, 10th Grade English
Maury River Middle School
Gretchen Dowless, 6th Grade Science / Eagle Academy Homeroom
Courtney Diette, 8th Grade English
Davida Staton, Eagle Academy with Elise Sheffield, Boxerwood Gardens
Central Elementary
Coleen Cosgriff, 5th Grade Social Studies
Engaging in RCS Partnerships
Between March and April, students made three to four visits to their partner classrooms to observe student learning, participate as model students, and lead activities related to Project-Based units designed by their teaching partners. These visits supported ongoing classroom initiatives to nurture hands-on, interactive learning, and increase student ownership of knowledge. 
As part of this new VMI / RCS partnership initiative, cadets helped coordinate and mentor students participating in two science conferences: NEST FEST, an environmental research conference for middle schoolers hosted by Boxerwood Gardens’ Director of Education Elise Sheffield.
Cadets also accompanied high school students to Danny Lancaster in Clifton Forge for a regional Environmental Science Summit.
Cadets participating in both conferences were impressed with the level of commitment and creative effort students made to their research, and their poise in presenting original ideas. “Discovering wonderful ideas” is a core principle of Outward Bound’s Expeditionary Learning, a model that had spurred discussions all semester.
In addition, all VMI cadets must take courses in Public Speaking and Rhetoric, so these skills came in handy as they mentored and critiqued student work.
Models of Excellence – Creating Resources
Ron Berger, a founding member of expeditionary teaching in the U.S., advocates that we encourage “beautiful designs” and pride in student work. He reminds us of a basic tenet of any work, especially work done by students:
“Is there a more profound lesson than taking pride in creating work of importance and beauty for a real audience?” (“Beautiful Work”, bie.org 2020)
His principled recognition of beautiful designs in student work is one emulated by both EL and PBL Learning. It’s also a lesson that VMI English Majors, who make up most of our courses, become familiar with in their forays into the writing process. They learn, as Berger notes, that “we bring almost all work through multiple drafts or rehearsals to refine and improve it.” At the end of the term, after multiple drafts of pre-proposals, teach-ins, reflections, peer reviews, we were inspired in our efforts to polish and share our unit designs in the form of “models of excellence” learning cards. As part of their final teaching portfolios, cadet teams designed these teaching resource cards to introduce educational proposals for a two-three week Expeditionary Learning Unit aimed at student audiences in their respective partner classroom. These teaching portfolios include designs for immersive and guided instruction activities, and reflect on their experience in three domains-academic, civic and personal. Most of their unit designs were inspired by both what they saw teachers offer, but also through interactions they had with local students.
If you’re visiting the site as a teacher, please enjoy scrolling over our cadet teaching portfolios under the 2020 School Inquiries tab, or peruse our VMI Student Field Journal for insights from their semester in Rockbridge County schools. Unfortunately, the recent pandemic cut our partnerships short, but we are very thankful for the time given to see how local teaching and learning is flourishing through hard work in the Rockbridge County.