Talking Stick - September/October 2011 - 22

RES LIFE
Experiential learning is critical to this program’s success. As Kinsella explains, “Essential to this program is the adherence and commitment to experiential education and transformative learning principles, as a supplement to classroom education. To this end, the WNLI is comprised of a series of experiential-based activities that span the year. In 2010-2011, the program included the recruitment of an Experiential Learning Planning Committee (ELPC) to help grow the program, attendance at the Annual Canadian Aboriginal Festival, bi-weekly Teaching/Learning Circles organized in conjunction with the University of Toronto’s First Nations House, and a culminating experiential journey, where program participants traveled to Curve Lake First Nation to work on the land, experience traditional teachings, and explore Aboriginal sites in the surrounding area.” The program, now going into its third year, continues to gain momentum; it will go campus-wide this year, open to all students on the University of Toronto Mississauga campus, and may also work more closely with the Region of Peel, where the campus is located, to connect the program with the local Aboriginal community. The program may also add an Elder in Residence component, marrying traditional Aboriginal culture with modern residence living. Recently at the 2011 ACUHO-I Annual Conference and Exposition, Chief Housing Ofﬁcer Gloria Cecilia Belden Fernández and Residential Life Coordinator Gaby Garza, from the Universidad de Monterrey in Nuevo León, Mexico, presented on their experiential learning program called Decide. With a new housing operation on campus (established in August of 2006), the professional staff wanted a program to support the formative model of the residence system. The Decide experiential learning program is a series of facilitated activities focusing on teamwork, community building, and decision making. Key elements of the program are dynamism, individual work, challenging experiential activities, reﬂection (debrieﬁng), teamwork, ownership, ritual, and follow-up. Belden Fernández and Garza explained that facilitated experiential activities challenge students to reﬂect on their decision-making process and to consider how each decision they make impacts them as individuals and affects others in the residence community. For example, one of the activities students
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Talking Stick - September/October 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - September/October 2011
