Experiential Educator

Experiential education is a teaching philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people’s capacity to contribute to their communities.

Experiential education roots learners in ideas, places, and relationships that are directly relevant to their lives. We accomplish this through place-based education, project-based learning, expeditionary learning and much more.

Focus on dialogue
At parkour class, learners fully participate in and even co-create the learning experience as it unfolds. We pose each parkour challenge as a problem that the learners can solve through risk management, self-awareness and critical thought. When we introduce a new obstacle, we do so in a dialogical fashion: how might one best deal with this obstacle? Why this movement, and not another? What are the risks? 

Experiential education
We frame each learning experience with discussion, reflection, and an effort to apply our newfound knowledge to future experiences. Each parkour class begins and ends with a short debrief.

Technology
When we teach parkour, we provide youth with the opportunity to join a community and culture that really exists. Parkour practitioners use technology all the time. They watch parkour films to get stoked. They film themselves so that they can review their movements, or even make their own films. We incorporate cameras and phones into our class because we feel that it is “healthy screen exposure”.

Humility: once is never
We honour only movements that are demonstrated safely and successfully in repetition; for instance, at least ten times in a row. This is a way of maintaining humility, which is a core principle of parkour.

Self-mastery: choose not to fall

If you’re afraid to fall, you fall because you’re afraid.
Everything is choice. Choose not to fall.
– Daniel Ilabaca, founding parkour philosopher

At its most sophisticated level, parkour empowers the practitioner to achieve self-mastery by overcoming fear itself through sheer willpower. However, this ability comes at a price: personal accountability, humility and risk management skills. In order to decide not to be afraid, one must first be able to discern that one ought not to be afraid.