Detours Are the Learning

When I was young, we often took family road trips. My whole family squished into our van and headed for some destination. Inevitably, my dad would pull over at some historic detour so that we could read the plaques and see the sights. I remember thinking, "Why can't we just be a normal family who rents jet skis or goes to amusement parks for family vacation?" We were always stuck with this history stuff. And then last summer, when I was with all of my siblings again, WE were the ones that wanted to go to all of the quirky little historical spots and read the plaques. All of these detours shaped us into curious people and helped us build a sense of ourselves as part of something much bigger. We came to see that the spirit of road-tripping is the detours. Finding yourself in some unexpected place, being introduced to some American oddity one didn't know existed is the most compelling piece of the experience.

I think about my childhood road trip detours during our project work at school. Our approach to learning is often organic and meandering. We find LOTS of detours. The detours aren't separate from our learning, they just seem like they take a long time. We're trying to create a culture mixing game and it feels like it is taking FOR-EV-ERRRRR, but that is because we are taking time on some of our detours to examine things like how population density affects cultures and how location on the globe impacts one's climate (and because we have things we're trying to finish before the end of the year.... and because we're in the middle of our end-of-year testing, but you know what I mean).

Eventually I figured out that detours were the road trip. I'm being reminded of that in our project work. Even if our game were never to be completed, all of the thinking and conversations along the way about cultures mixing, what happens with different generations of immigrant families, what factors helps shapes one's culture, how we are all the same in that we are a mix of cultures but that no one quite has our exact recipe, or how having the highest population density may be a catalyst for more emigration out of one's country. In the end, these detours are the learning.