An Exploration into Demonstration

By Zenami Vision

Exploration, an extremely controversial, yet unique class that isn’t in many schools. It’s disliked by some and loved by others. It was introduced as a program so students could explore the real world. Life, social issues, nature, and also inspires activism in youth. It teaches all about the world, and not just knowledge restrained to our community, making the entire world our playground, like off site learning where students go outside to observe the world around us directly. 

Exploration introduces a new way of learning, called project based learning that is kind of like a cycle. Throughout the year, students begin learning about social issues, all usually representing a form of corruption, injustice, or general problem that is harming something or someone. One picks a social issue, learns about it, proposes what artwork or action they would like to do in order to represent/participate in reducing the issue, do it and lastly make a reflection.

An anonymous student in 7th grade claims, “I hate it. It doesn’t help us in the real world. Other subjects help us in the real world but expo doesn’t, so it doesn’t really have any value.” When asked about why they dislike it, they claimed, “The things in expo aren’t fun to learn and the expo trips aren’t helpful because you are just sitting there.” Lastly, when asked about how it can be better, they said, “Expo can be better if it was just learning about real world events or just more important things in general.” 

One of the ways exploration helps students explore these interests are the expo trips. Each year, each grade goes on different trips that relate to what students may be learning at that moment. These trips seem to be like a carefree break from school, but students still learn from them. For example, for 6th grade an expo trip consisted of going to a street market to learn about plants, animals and every other thing that they grow there. In 7th grade, students went to puppet shows, aquariums, and graffiti grounds to learn more about how people express themselves creatively in the form of art. Lastly, in 8th grade, students went to a cemetery to view various memorials and monuments,  in order to brainstorm what they might want to do for theirs.

Another anonymous student thinks, “It’s ok. Nothing big going on, it’s 50/50.”  When asked about what they can do, they said, “I’m not so sure, I don’t really see any problems with it,” and lastly when asked about if it teaches relevant things, they said, “Most of the stuff they say is pretty helpful, but me personally, I can’t really understand it.”

In conclusion, some people like Expo or think it’s at least ok, and others hate it. In the end, it depends on your perspective and way of learning, but all things have their positives and negatives.