This weekly blog update is a little different this week. Ask your child(ren) what their favorite part of school was this week! In the meantime…..
Summer Reading
You may have seen the numerous articles today about continuing national math and reading test score declines. While COVID has certainly exacerbated learning loss in recent years, the decline has been occurring over decades. An ABC News article mentioned reading habits among middle schoolers, which I wanted to share with you because it was such a stark contrast to what we are seeing here at Acton Academy Madison West where the heroes love reading:
“Asked about their reading habits, fewer students than ever say they’re reading for fun every day. Just 14% reported daily reading for pleasure — which has been tied to better social and academic outcomes — down from 27% in 2012. Almost a third of students said they never or hardly ever read for fun, up from 22% in 2012.”
We plan to ask the heroes if they would like to design a group summer reading challenge, or simply set goals for themselves this summer to continue reading books for fun. As a parent, I’ve been thinking about this, too, and how we can integrate pleasure reading into our family routines. Maybe it’s 15-30 minutes of independent reading time before bed. Maybe it’s taking trips to the library or bookstore to find new and fun books that our children can read on their own. Perhaps it’s a book swap with friends, or reading books on long car and airplane rides instead of screens.
If you have any fun ideas for encouraging summer reading, we are excited to hear them and will share them amongst us all (maybe something we could talk about at the next parent coffee?). We are happy to loan out any books from our library here to support summer pleasure reading!
Service and Being Part of Something Bigger than Themselves
Over the last three or four weeks, we’ve been working hard to prepare to welcome six additional children into our school (potentially more) in the Fall. While that may not sound like a lot on its face, it means we have tripled enrollment. It also means we will run two studios: Spark and Discovery.
In addition to her guiding duties, our Guide has been working so hard to get the Spark studio ready: both physical space and learning design. And we’ve gone through a huge effort to shuffle around the spaces so that we now have shared free time, makerspace and library areas that both studios will use.
What does this mean for the learners? Again, putting my parent-hat on, I’m thrilled that our son gets to see a group of people starting from nothing and building something wonderful. And I hope that you are all as excited as I am that your children get to see that and be a part of it. We are so grateful that you parents took this leap with us.
A few things that got us really thinking about this:
- Yesterday, we had grandparents visit who asked the children what their favorite part of Acton is. They put it in terms of “rose, bud, thorn.” One learner said his rose was, “Acton is different. At other schools, the teacher tells you what you need to know. Here we figure it out for ourselves.” The Guide and I looked at each other and mentally high-fived 🙂
- All of them said their “bud” (something they are looking forward to) is having more learners. Hearing that made us really appreciate the leap of faith that the heroes have taken as well. It isn’t always easy going to a school of four. We are grateful to them for their willingness to put their trust in the future vision for their school.
- The heroes have been working very hard on the school, also! On some days a couple weeks ago, they helped us move charis, books and makerspace materials across rooms. Arguably, 80% of their time was spent riding a cart 🙂 BUT they were a huge help nevertheless.
- This week, they volunteered to help Ellie laminate and cut a couple hundred Montessori cards for the Spark studio. They have said they find the work “satisfying.” Meanwhile they are learning valuable lessons about helpfulness, work ethic and experiencing practical work, not just academic work.
- Two guests who have spent time in our studio have pulled me aside to comment about how they notice the children help and support each other.
These stories are examples of the life-skills and character-building that Acton heroes experience.
PS – the thorn was freedom level points violations 🙂
