Gap Year Association

Program Learning Outcomes

• Travel in a responsible, smart, and savvy way by taking local transportation, booking accommodation, managing a modest budget, and learning how to authentically engage with local culture and customs.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the host region through language basics, and a greater understanding of politics, history, culture, and religion.
• Examine global interdependence through the lens of privilege, perspective, social justice, and responsibility.
• Achieve a greater understanding of your genuine interests and passions, and continue building the confidence and self-esteem necessary to engage in that which inspires and motivates you.
• Develop a more refined sense of what you want to study before starting college (if you decide college is the right fit for you), and improve your academic performance as you study subjects that you love!
• Demonstrate interpersonal and intercultural communication skills with a wide variety of people.
• Strengthen essential job and life skills while building your resume in exceptionally creative ways.
• Learn how to be independent, self-reliant, and overcome challenges.
• Practice the concepts of compassion, empathy, and gratitude.
• Manage stress in productive ways.

These learning outcomes are realized through a dynamic process of action and reflection.

Here's an example:

Action: Your group is living with homestay families in rural Ecuador. The homes are simple, and families have few material possessions. You work alongside your host community all day, planting endemic trees, practicing Spanish, eating meals together, and playing the occasional game with local children.

Our local partner discusses the village economy and informs us that most families own their own land and house, which have been passed on for generations. She tells us that most local families have little to no debt and that they grow a large percentage of their own food. You notice that most locals are easy to smile, laugh, and be generous with their time and attention.

Reflection: The next morning, after an awesome yoga session with a backdrop of the Andes, your Overseas Educator engages your group in two CDLs called "Cultural Values and Freedom from Debt." Each group member creates a "values hierarchy," listing what you value in numerical order.

Then you discuss questions such as:

How are your values a reflection of your culture? Are you (and the people you love) living a life that reflects your values? Why or why not? How are your values similar and/or different to the apparent values of our host culture? You then dive into the concept of debt and participate in activities that demonstrate our cultural emphasis on loans and debt, and the complexities thereof.

How does being in debt lead to achieving (or undermining) our values? Is having access to loans a source of liberation, as we buy homes and cars, or does being in debt undermine the value of freedom? You begin asking each other: how do we define "wealth"? How has our cultural emphasis on material wealth created opportunities (or obstacles) for us? Does our emphasis on material wealth promote a strong sense of community?

This is an example of experiential education at play. Through what may seem like a fairly normal day of working and interacting with people from another culture, we observe differences in how communities function, how children spend their time, the degree to which our values hierarchies differ, and we end up having in-depth discussions about the fundamental nature of our own culture.

And the conversation goes on from day to day, building an increased global perspective, a stronger sense of self, and a greater understanding of how we want to conduct our own lives.