Week 14: 12/8-12/14
From the Spark Studio
From Miss Anna: We had a week of big accomplishments! There are a few materials in the studio that require you to master a significant amount of other activities before you can begin working with them. One is our rainbow reading drawers – learners must master all of our letter sound boxes (there are six) before they can start the reading program. This week, two of our learners mastered the sound boxes and started on the first shelf of our reading program! It is a big milestone, and they were so proud. They were reporting it as their highlight at the end of the day and older Heroes were giving character callouts for the accomplishment.
One other “big” work that was used a lot this week is our one hundred board. After a lot of focused effort and cheering from allies, we had a few heroes master it for the first time this week. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple square board with 100 small tiles with the numbers 1-100 written on them. The heroes have to organize the tiles in numerical order. It takes a long time to complete and a lot of focus. What’s been surprising to me has been the number of heroes who have consistently come back to the material to do it again after mastering it. Each time it’s completed, the accomplishment is shared throughout the studio with lots of excitement!
Both of these examples are a huge indicator to me that these young heroes have an ownership over their learning – they aren’t simply checking boxes because some adult in their life told them what to do. Heroes are making progress because they want to. The adults are just along for the ride.
From the Elementary Studio
From JeVonne: When Jeanette first challenged the Elementary heroes with their Egyptian Kingdom Recruitment Fair there was limited engagement. But that changed in the last week. Heroes took ownership and ran with it. Whether they were making bracelets or origami for prizes, or building pyramids for activities or doing extra research, the heroes exploded the project beyond what Jeanette or I envisioned. I loved listening to them debate throughout the day about which kingdom was better. The discussion following the recruitment fair was a highlight; lessons were learned not only about Egypt, but also about quality research, and politics. One hero asked why we didn’t do this before the election? Had we realized what this challenge would turn into, we certainly would have done so. It is amazing to give these capable young people a challenge and watch them run with it. Truly we adults are often along for the ride!
It was hard to pull our heroes away from their Quest challenges this week (I was asked a few times why we can’t do Quest time all day) but when we managed to do so, we had spectacular visitors. Our Sudanese visitor filled us all with compassion as we imagined living in a foreign country without family and friends, where we didn’t speak the language and we were blind. When I asked the heroes how we could send him a “thank you” card, their vote to go visit him, far exceeded my expectations and warmed my heart. And I loved listening to our heroes talk about how loud Hungarian whips are and how cool the jewelry from Italy is. We were so grateful for all our visitors!
Another highlight this week was our overflowing “gotcha” board. While perhaps there was a little more focus on gotchas than anything else on Thursday, who can complain too much when heroes want to give each other compliments! It was a highlight to witness the unified tribe they have built; they truly care about one another.
Sometimes it is a little uncomfortable for us as guides to let heroes change or adapt or develop challenges or learning experiences in a way different than we imagined. But we all agree as we step back and “go along for the ride” this learner driven community has experiences more meaningful than we ever could have planned!