Vail Mountain School students get hands-on with their learning in Denver

Vail Mountain School middle schoolers took their classroom learning three-dimensional during an action-packed day in Denver in November.

Theater students engaged in a behind-the-scenes tour of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, while non-theater students connected exhibits, discussions and performances at other locations in Denver to lessons in science, math and history classes.

“It was an incredibly excellent day,” said Trevor Adams, the middle school director. “We had a lot of positive experiences with the kids, particularly the performing arts department…My theater students are still talking about it.”

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Experiential learning curriculum is embracing an update

Vail Mountain School is pivoting its experiential learning curriculum, long integral to the school, to become more closely connected to what students learn in classrooms.

November’s experiential learning day — the first of its kind — builds on ideas laid out by teachers, staff, and the school’s new learning elevated strategic plan.

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Vail Mountain School has run other experiential learning options, like its winter hut trips and start-of-school-year orientation trips, which were more oriented toward building community.

As Vail Mountain School implements its updated experiential learning curriculum, the experiences and experimentation will be tied into analysis and reflection in a cycle.

“We’re really looking for that reflection and application component out of the experiential learning process,” Adams said.

“We weren’t just trying to get kids out of the building,” Adams said. “It was literally ways of enhancing and encouraging deeper learning in different aspects.”

Last month, sixth graders explored the 10th Mountain Division’s history through the film “Mission Mt. Mangart,” with the help of Chris Anthony, the Eagle County resident who created it.

“Whether it be a museum exhibit or just something that’s happening in the local civic community, we think it’s important for (students) to understand that what they’re learning in the classroom does apply outside of it,” Adams said. “And how to apply it, I think, is really important. That was core to why experiential learning is important to us.”

Theater students learned about the many elements of a production

There are 38 students in the opt-in middle school theater program, nearly half of all sixth through eighth graders.

Christi Howell, the performing arts department chair, came up with the idea for the trip to the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. Howell, however, credits her students for the idea.

“As a teacher, you always want to better your students,” she said. “I always feel like you can teach them, and you can give them opportunities, but to have those hands-on experiences really makes a difference.”

Howell’s 38 musical theater students have a variety of interests, from performing on-stage to building costumes, props and sets to lighting the set and beyond. 

“Once you start working with the students and you start seeing where their talents are at, you think, ‘How can I better them and their talents?'” Howell said. “We talk a lot about respecting the process, and I started looking into ‘how I can get these kids into something bigger than what goes on here in the valley?'”

“So I thought, ‘What a better way than to go someplace professional?'” Howell said. 

Theater students toured the depths of the Denver Center for Performing Arts, where they saw the costume-making process, the costume rooms, set design and construction, props and more.

The behind-the-scenes tour showed students “how it happens on the professional level, and how many amazing jobs that are available through those different things that you wouldn’t even think about,” Howell said.

“The kids loved it, and, and it was so fun,” Howell said. “The tour was perfect.”

Students were engaged throughout the tour and beyond, with the power of the experience shining through the reflections they wrote after returning to Vail.

“The reflections were very thoughtful, and they had like a little worksheet to do as they were doing (the tour) and they took it really seriously,” Howell said. “I feel like it was a huge success.”

Howell is already building on students’ learning from the field trip in her curriculum. The middle school theater department is putting on the musical “Willy Wonka” this spring — show dates are May 8, 9 and 10 — and students are using their learning from the tour for prop and set design.

“We’re taking what they’ve learned and applying it to how can we make this prop … and drawing out the costumes,” Howell said. “What they’ve learned (about) how to put on a big production, they’re taking to our production here.”

“They have some great ideas, and a lot of these ideas they got from that field trip,” Howell said.

Non-theater students explored museum exhibits, saw ‘Hamilton’

With nearly half of the middle school in the theater program, Adams asked his other teachers if their students might also benefit from a hands-on experience in Denver. The teachers sprang into action.

“The biggest piece for us is that we want kids to have real-world application for what they’re learning, as well as kind of some critical thinking skills,” Adams said.

Sixth- and seventh-grade students visited the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, connecting the museum exhibits to curriculum themes in their science classes.

Eighth graders toured the Clyfford Still Museum, underwent an immersive experience at the Lumonics Light & Sound Gallery, engaged in a dialogue with Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Vail Mountain School alumnus, and visited the Buell Theater to watch “Hamilton.” Each portion of the day connected to students’ classroom learning, creating alternative applications for the algebra, light and sound wave, art, history and civics curricula they learn in Vail.

For the eighth graders, who are learning about the Founding Fathers in their civics classes, watching “Hamilton” was “the real core of the day,” Adams said.

But the civics lesson did not stay rooted in the 1700s — eighth graders also had a private discussion with Johnston about how his time at the school influenced his desire to go into civic engagement.

“(It) was really wonderful for our kids to see an alumnus who’s had that kind of success,” Adams said. “The fact that he talked mostly about the service aspect of why he got into what he’s doing, I think resonated with our students who we work to get into our community more often than not to give back.”

While sixth and seventh graders returned to Vail at the end of the normal school day, eighth-grade students arrived at 1 a.m. and had a sleepover in the Vail Mountain School gym.

What’s next for the experiential learning curriculum?

The success of November’s experiential learning day has teachers and administrative staff already planning for similar activities in the spring, beginning with integrating more classroom connections into hut trips over the next three months.

“We have some ideas for the spring for how we can do another experiential learning day like this. And they’re in the works,” Adams said.