Our current premises are a little more constrained than we’d like, for sure, so it’s a good thing that learning at Latika doesn’t end with the four walls of a classroom. That’s because our curriculum includes something many children rarely get enough of: experiential learning.

Experiential learning is exactly what it sounds like — learning through direct experience. Whether it’s watching how money is deposited at a bank, making bhel puri with vegetables they picked themselves, or seeing a real-life tiger after reading about one in class, we all process and retain information better when we do something rather than just hear or read about it. According to a 2017 report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), experiential learning significantly improves problem-solving, collaboration, and long-term recall, all skills that standard rote learning doesn’t cultivate as well. That’s because children – disabled or not – learn best when learning feels useful, immediate, and connected to the world around them. When experiential learning takes the form of field trips, it also gives disabled kids access to the same rights as their abled peers to explore, play, and belong in their communities.

This year, our students went on almost a dozen outings and counting. Among these were a visit to the Dehradun Zoo, a community playground, a local bank, a post office, a book café, a science center, railway station, and even a vegetable shop to buy ingredients for a cooking activity. Each trip was directly connected to what they were learning in class about animals, transport, community services, nutrition, or science, making learning real in a way that no worksheet or slideshow ever can.

Take the visit to the bank. Our children got to see how money moves, who community helpers are, and how to ask questions in a public space. By offering exposure to real-life transactions, roles of staff, and concepts like deposits and withdrawals, that single outing touched on literacy, numeracy, social interaction, and independence.

Exploring Dehradun Zoo helped reinforce themes of transport and animals, provided sensory and language exposure, and taught them to travel calmly as a group on a bus.

At the post office, they wrote and mailed letters, then received them at home. Suddenly, ‘communication’ went from being an abstract concept to a letter in the mailbox, with their own name on it, helping connect reading, writing, and communication to real-world systems.

At the community playground, they learned teamwork, rules, fair play, and the joy of unstructured physical movement, while building muscles, cooperation, friendships and resilience through play.

The science centre gave them access to concepts like AI, physics, and the natural world in ways that ignited their curiosity in technology, science, and natural phenomena through touch-and-feel exhibits.

At the railway station our vocational trainees learnt to buy tickets and board a train.

A visit to the vegetable shop integrated with a group cooking session using buddy systems imparted lessons on nutrition, budgeting, and independence.

Experiential learning is easily embedded in mainstream classrooms as well. You don’t even need to plan elaborate field trips. Start small:

• Bring the outside world in by using props, physical objects, videos, and real-life scenarios.
• Let students move, such as by role playing a bus ride, setting up a mini vegetable market, or simulating a bank transaction.
• Link lessons to lived reality, such as using money when teaching numbers or drafting actual notes or letters when teaching writing.

• Collaborate with local institutions like libraries, bakeries, post offices, parks, all of which make great low-cost learning spaces.

When teachers realize that learning is something students live rather than just something they’re told, they can design each experience with the intention of bringing the world a little closer.