Essay Sample on Outside Classroom Narrative

Introduction

Education is all about preparing one for life after school as well as tackling real life issues and occurrences. In this case, there is obvious an advantage of getting myself into social, psychological and physical challenges that are usually available in the outdoor environment, aside from the classroom environment. A scientific understanding of learning involves a proper understanding of the learning processes, learning environments, sociocultural processes, teaching among many other factors that contribute to learning. It is, therefore, vital to understand and ascertain what is required of learners to establish a deep and rich understanding, highlight what results in effective studying as well as the conditions that contribute to a supportive environment for teaching and learning. A deeper understanding of a student's learning processes resonates around their prior knowledge in learning, plasticity, early experience on brain development, the view of learning as an active process, the concept of learning for understanding and the view of learning as a time-consuming activity.

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A vital goal of schooling, or learning in a classroom environment is to prepare students for flexible adaptation to new problems and settings in the real world. It, therefore, depends on the student's ability to transfer what they have learned to new situations and actual environments to provide a vital index of adaptive and flexible learning. Instructional approaches would look equivalent when the only measure of learning would depend on memory for facts that had been initially presented. The best approach would depend on how well the learning through reading and writing can be transferred to new problems and settings such as outside the classroom environment. Classroom environment stresses much on memorization other than understanding, yet learning with understanding would easily facilitate the transfer of knowledge in the real world application. Therefore, how important is the use of reading in an environment other than the classroom?

I've been reading various books on first nursing and first aid processes as a red-cross member. However, on one occasion, our community youth group, including me, went for an outdoor event which involved hiking, rock climbing, sky walking, canoeing, orienteering among others within the surrounding areas. While the games trained us to be risk takers in the processes of participating in them, it was vital to take care to prevent any injuries from taking place. However, one of my group members, David, drowned in the water while canoeing in the nearby river. I had to dive into the water among other swimmers to get him out of the water and was ready to give him cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) first aid. Having read it in books, it was time to apply it. I believed it was better to do something than to do nothing and the difference between the two options could be David's life. I checked if the environment was safe for the person and as well as his conscious levels. He was slightly unconscious.

I put him on his back on the firm surface, placed the heel of one hand over the centre of his chest and used my upper body to push straight down the chest. After approximately 30 chest compressions, as I had read, I opened David's airway using the head tilt, chin-lift maneuver and was ready to open the air way. I opened the airway, pinched the nostrils shut for mouth-to-mouth breathing. I gave two rescues breathes; the first one lasting one second and observing his chest and the second time the chest rose. Moreover, I had already called the local emergency number hence was sure that emergency support was on the way.

The narrative details provide a step-by-step breakdown of the occurrence of the events to make it possible to identify the areas where the activities were done accordingly and areas where errors were made and should be rectified in future. The occurrence and breakdown of the narrative details taught me that outdoor events can help participants to understand risk awareness, risk assessment as well as management and the most appropriate control measures. As a Red Cross member, this would help me equip my friends and I to enable us to deal with the risks that we would likely face. In this case, we went canoeing with no protective gear hence the outcome. The details also play a vital role in creating the picture of the scene, to make it possible and easier for the reader or the person listening to it to formulate the picture in his/her mind, hence facilitating easy learning.

Conclusion

Learning in an environment outside the classroom is vital and would make it easy to transfer the knowledge in a real world set up, as opposed to the classroom memorizations. Moreover, it would help to focus more on facts and details, rather than larger themes of causes and consequences of events without experiencing them in reality. The knowledge that is taught in a variety of contexts is likely to support flexible transfer, as opposed to knowledge that is taught in a single context. An outside classroom environment enables the student to develop flexible understandings of when, why, where and how to use their knowledge to solve new problems if they are able to extract the underlying themes and principles studied inside the classroom environment.