This week was exhibition week! The heroes planned for their Coding & Robotics exhibition which included a tour of their Code.org work, a friendly robotics competition, and a panel discussion where heroes were asked questions like, “what did you learn from this quest that will help you on your hero’s journey?” The answer, overwhelmingly, was persistence in the face of challenge. Or, “if you could choose one thing to automate, what would it be?” “Cleaning my room,” and “cleaning up the kitchen!” were popular answers.
A couple of heroes started a drama club at the school, and a group of children have been rehearsing a play together which they will present at the next session’s exhibition. In order to support their interest in drama, we took a field trip to the Madison Children’s Theater to see, “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me.” The play was adapted from a children’s book of the same title written by Maya Angelou and illustrated by Jean-Michel Basquiat. Throughout the week, the children discussed the book, as well as the heroes who wrote and illustrated it, during morning launches.
We have welcomed two new joiners to Discovery in the last few weeks: a new hero and a new guide! At the end of most days, we have been re-visiting how many of the systems in the studio work so all heroes and guides are on the same page! We are also creating a “systems wall” with visual posters on studio systems so that they are easy to see and reference. Systems are key to Acton learning philosophy for a) creating structure and accountability, and b) delegating studio ownership and governance to the heroes. They contribute to designing systems during weekly Town Halls.
There is often a misconception that Acton Academies lack structure. This isn’t the case. The difference is that it’s not the teacher determining structure and doling out rewards and consequences based on the teacher’s judgment of a situation. Rather, we set up clear systems ahead of time that everyone plays by – sort of like rules of the game and heroes come in each day, and agree to play the game of school by those rules. It’s a lot more like real life.
