It’s the heart of experiential learning, one of Pacific Discovery’s core program elements and the reason our students come home feeling that they truly learned something about the world.
Sometimes it’s halfway across a hanging bridge in the Costa Rican cloud forest, where your guide is expertly identifying native species of plants, animals, and insects you’ve only seen in nature documentaries.
Sometimes it’s kneeling in the dirt, planting kō while your native Hawaiian host tells you, “This is how our ancestors fed entire communities.”
For Pacific Discovery, it’s not a buzzword or a box to tick—it’s how programs are built.
Experiential learning means:
Meeting local people who live the topics we’re studying
Doing real, hands-on work alongside them
Understanding the “why” behind the activity
Reflecting afterward so that the lesson stays with you
Our goal is for students not just to see the world, but to understand their place in it.
Two snapshots—from my experience on programs in Costa Rica and Hawaiʻi—show exactly what that looks like in action.
In Costa Rica, our classroom was the rainforest.
During orientation week, we visited a small coffee farm in Monteverde that grows beans sustainably using homemade fertilizers and natural pest control.
To make sure we really engaged our senses, two students were blindfolded for the entire tour. Their peers guided them along jungle trails and through the various farm operations, describing textures, smells, and sounds. It was an exercise in trust and awareness, as well as a way to understand how a farm operates beyond just seeing the final product.
Later in the week, we volunteered at a wildlife rescue center. Instead of passively observing the animals, students chopped fruit for spider monkeys, cleaned the peccary pens, and prepped food for kinkajous and ocelots. By the end of the day, they could tell you which animals were being rehabilitated, which were permanent residents, and why certain species could never be released.
That evening, a guided night walk revealed another layer of the forest: tarantulas in their burrows, sleeping toucans, and even a few mischievous kinkajous swinging overhead.
The takeaway wasn’t just “we saw wildlife.”
It was “we learned how everything is connected, how simple volunteer work fits into the larger picture of conservation, and how to be respectful guests in someone else’s home.”
In Hawaiʻi, experiential learning takes on a cultural depth that textbooks can’t replicate. It begins with the land—and food.
For two days, our group worked with James and Uncle Dwayne to build an imu, a traditional underground oven. We dug the pit, layered wood and lava rock, wrapped meat in ti leaves, and buried the mound to cook overnight.
As we worked, James shared moʻolelo (stories) about Hawaiian chiefs and demigods, and introduced core values like aloha (the exchange of breath and love), kuleana (sacred responsibility), and ʻohana (family).
When we unburied the imu the next morning and shared the meal with local families, the lesson wasn’t about cooking—it was about community, gratitude, and relationship to place.
A few days later, at the Kumuola Marine Science Education Center, students learned how Native Hawaiians engineered fishponds (loko iʻa) to feed entire coastal communities. After the history lesson came the work: standing waist-deep in brackish water, hauling bucket after bucket of sediment to help restore a pond.
Students understood that they weren’t “helping out” for a photo—they were actively participating in a centuries-old system of land stewardship.
Every Pacific Discovery day ends the same way: gathered together, debriefing after a shared meal.
We ask questions like:
What challenged you today?
What surprised you?
These conversations are where the “learning” truly happens.
Students name the moments that stretched them, from conquering a fear of heights on a zip-line to navigating cultural conversations with humility.
One student said it best:
“I realized I’m braver than I thought—but also more curious. I want to understand the ‘why’ behind everything now.”
That’s experiential learning at work.
When students return home, they bring more than souvenirs. They carry:
A lived understanding of sustainability and ethics
Real respect for cultures and communities they’ve learned from
Confidence in their ability to adapt and lead
A sense of ownership in their education
It’s what turns a trip into a transformation.
At Pacific Discovery, experiential learning isn’t a single activity on the itinerary, it is the itinerary. Because we believe the most valuable lessons happen:
Spotting a wild kinkajou in the canopy after spending the day volunteering at a sanctuary,
Laughing and covered in mud while restoring a fishpond, or
At sunset, sharing food you pulled from the earth with the locals who taught you how.
No classroom can compete with that.
Posted by Doreen Mesman on November 07, 2025
