Experiential Learning
Every week we provide time in our schedule for students to undertake long-format exploration of the relevance of EBS’s academic and social emotional program to the values, pursuits, and communities that matter deeply to them. Through these extended design sessions, field trips, and workshops, we invite students to translate their learning into solutions for challenges facing communities, industries, and social movements and into visions for the kind of world they would like to see. We are excited to share these highlights from our experiential learning program from the past year.
Oakland Freeways Design Challenge
Students explored the layers of systemic racism that shaped public policy about transportation and the interstate freeway system in the 20th century and the enduring impact of this history on present-day Oakland. Working in groups, students prototyped and shared ideas for ways to address the harm to Oakland neighborhoods and residents caused by the freeway system.
Understanding the Impact of AI on Education, Politics, and Society
Guided by curriculum created by Common Sense Media, students researched AI’s origins, assessed its risks and benefits, and proposed an ethical framework to inform EBS’s - and their own - use of AI.
Community Stewardship
Students devoted a morning to stewardship projects across our campus and Berkeley. With the support of City of Berkeley staff, they performed traffic circle maintenance, planting California native plants and clearing storm drains to prevent flooding.
Selma Viewing + Democracy Design Session
Students learned about the history of the history of the civil rights movement and the struggle for voting rights in the US and then prototyped public policy interventions that could support voter turnout and combat voter disenfranchisement.
Taking off the Mask
For many years, EBS has partnered with Ashanti Branch, founder and executive director of the Ever Forward Club, to help students examine the societal forces that shape our identities and constrain our pursuit of authentic connection with each other. In this workshop, Ashanti led students in an interactive archaelogical exploration of gender norms and the boxes we are put in by prevailing cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. Students shared their own experiences with a lot of vulnerability and reflection and offered their own visions of what it could look like to move through the world without the need for masks that conceal who we are.
Field Science in San Francisco
Students spent a morning in Bernal Heights in San Francisco investigating shale and soil to identify plant, insect, and microbial life, test for acidity, and analyze the city’s past, present, and future through a scientific lens.