Session 4, Week 5
I had a meeting this week during the school day which took me away from the building. As I got in my car, Celebration was playing on the radio. I drove away thinking of all that we have to celebrate. Something I have celebrated a lot this week is our community of parents. There is no utopia. There are hard days and challenging aspects of CHOICE. There are hard days and challenging aspects of being a parent and of each stage of childhood development. I celebrate you parents who recognize this, embrace all the good that comes with this philosophy (and this stage of life), and work through the challenges with us. Thank you for sharing your high points with us. Thank you for sharing your struggles with us. Thank you for trusting your children. Thank you for being your child’s greatest mentor. I admire you. I am honored to share this journey with you.
And hopefully it comes as no surprise to you that the list of things to celebrate about your heroes every day and each week is endless! Here is the tip of the iceberg of what we celebrated this week…
In the Spark Studio we often get to celebrate “accidental” discoveries. When cleaning up a fairly messy work this learner discovered when he squirted soap on the tray that the other ingredients pushed away from the soap. He was so excited to show us all. “Look! Water doesn’t like soap!” A learner-driven discovery!
This learner celebrated failure and success when manipulating the red and blue rods during Montessori work cycle.
This week the Spark Studio filled up one of their Character Callout sheets. This group of 100 character callouts was celebrated with lunch outside.
These learners celebrated working together. They were so proud of their creativity and achieved it through hard work and cooperation.
This hero celebrated language this week! She worked SO hard reading a long story that was in her challenge zone. She was determined to meet her goal and persevered through the challenging words along the way (It is so great to have DELTA Studio mentors support us along the way!).
Mistakes can be frustrating. Not giving up and pushing through is truly something to celebrate!
When we learn about heroes from the past and explore their discoveries, it is a way of celebrating and continuing their legacy. We learned about Pythagoras and his discovery of the relationship between the squares made by the sides of a right triangle. Most people know this as a^2 + b^2 = c^2, but we explored the concept with physical tiles we could count and compare. Heroes continued to explore shapes.
After learning the story behind Archimedes’ principle, we explored volume. Many explored with objects displacing water, but others found it interesting to play with Floam and guess what irregular shape had more volume.
Heroes mimicked the iconic architectural style of ancient Athens.
One hero was so focused on his creation that he came back to improve his project for several days.
We were fortunate enough to have Kenai volunteer in our studio over the last few weeks. His mentorship was very meaningful to the heroes. We celebrated him since it was his last day with us.
The Fire Studio had a lot to celebrate this week. As we’ve just passed the halfway point of the year, many heroes are proudly celebrating their Half Way Writer’s Gym badge or their Half Way Math badge. Some heroes are even celebrating both!
One hero calmly recited a 6 stanza-long poem as part of her Writer’s Gym work–a great accomplishment after a lot of practice. One hero was stuck in the submission process of his Half Way Writer’s Gym badge and another hero coached him through; energy was high as they turned in the final binder together. On Thursday, one hero arrived at school right at 8:00 a.m. and said she had woken up extra early that morning to finish her Half Way Math Badge!
Many heroes are also celebrating the completion of Heroic Habit badges, having increased their habits of focus, mentorship, kindness, courage, curiosity, and other heroic characteristics for at least 30 days. One hero proudly shared that he completed 4 habit badges and would be awarded 6 badges next week at exhibition – an accumulation of several sessions of work.
The FS heroes also love celebrating holidays – well known and less known holidays alike. They are working together to plan a Valentine’s Celebration next week, and this week we learned about Lunar New Years and some of the ways it is celebrated throughout the world. Heroes could choose to make their own puppet in honor of the Year of the Dragon.
They also celebrated this winter thaw week with some sunny PE games.
After 5 weeks of voluntarily participating in GRIT during lunch each day, the entire studio earned their way to a fun, Final GRIT Challenge at the rec center ice skating rink. Some heroes had never skated before and other heroes celebrated with them as they tried something brand new. Some heroes felt far out of their comfort zone and heroes celebrated their bravery in doing something scary. Most heroes fell down at some point and everyone celebrated them as they got back on their feet for another try. Even the sociologist/Rink Attendant that is brought in for school groups made sure to seek out the guides afterwards to compliment the heroes on the unusually high levels of teamwork and kindness he had observed in them; and to ask questions about what made them unique. Through the ups and downs of ice skating, all heroes got to celebrate their increased GRIT this session!
Some heroes celebrated hard work during quest by paying a small admission fee to a Greek Feast. They enjoyed trying new flavors and some entirely new foods.
They’ve also been working as a whole studio towards completing enough challenges to earn some decor items for their exhibition. This week they hit 240 challenges complete and earned their final item! 
Studio maintenance has been a persistent challenge this session in the Fire Studio and they voted to amend their system starting this past week. Not all heroes were excited about the change, but after giving it their best for a few days and following through on accountability, their studio is looking much better and some reluctant heroes are now more committed and excited to contribute.
Some wise visitors from the Delta Studio instructed the FS heroes in techniques of debate this week, and a few heroes were willing to try out a debate event called sparring. We talked about the difference between fighting and debating and they appreciated how respectful and unemotional you can be when you disagree politely and let reason rather than emotion be the guiding principle.
These final two weeks of the quest have given the heroes a chance to envision what they want to share with their parents at the exhibition and also be creative in designing some of their own challenges. Thanks to some donated fabrics and clothing from the CHOICE community, heroes have been resourceful in coming up with ancient Greece-inspired characters to dress up as at the exhibition.
In the DELTA Studio I celebrate their maturity and humility to give and receive warm and cool feedback – face to face – at the end of every day. As heroes give their closest friends meaningful cool feedback, and their friends receive it, I am daily in awe, wishing this was something I had learned at their age. Related to this feedback, at the end of this week we celebrated a hero who had made tremendous progress in their math this week. However, it wasn’t really the math that we were celebrating, it was the change this hero had made. A drastic change in this hero’s choosing to stay at their desk and focus during Core Skills. Change is hard. Let’s celebrate it!
Heroes are loving woodworking. They work through lunch and stay after school. Their mentor gave them guidance through most all of it. But at one point they didn’t know what to do. Not to worry, the heroes simply researched and kept trying things until they figured it out. (FYI they were not experimenting with saws; they had good guidance with that part!) I celebrated when I came in the next day and they walked me through how they were stuck and what they did to figure it out.
We celebrated heroes’ failure this week! One hero tried to apply what he had learned in woodworking to create his quest model. It didn’t work; but I love that he had the skills and ideas to try – and a quest partner patient and willing to support his attempts.
Another hero decided to make up a game for the scheduled game on Thursday mornings. It turned out to be a flop, but they had a great time playing “duck, duck, goose” and I celebrate that he wanted to use his imagination and make up a game! I love watching middle schoolers enjoying playing actual games together.
We all celebrated a hero’s birthday this week. I personally celebrated when the hero told me it was the most honored she had ever felt on her birthday at a school (this is her first year with us). She felt like her fellow travelers really cared.
What did quest look like this last week before Exhibition? A good mix of playing games (because all is done for Quest deadlines), and crunch time (because things are mostly done), and panic mode (because some are far from done), and a whole bunch of Hero support mixed in! Let’s celebrate the life skill of time management because the DELTAs are definitely getting to practice it!
The creativity and use of various mediums for the models have been a total pleasure to watch come to fruition. We celebrate being in an environment that encourages uniqueness in the creative process. We love when we are asked, “Do we have to do it like in the example, or like so-and-so?” We love to respond: “would we ever want you to not be creative in your own way?” Heroes walk away very pleased, knowing they have freedom in how they proceed.
The writing for this Quest has stretched many heroes. It has also been wonderful to watch how they support each other. During a discussion about the writing, one hero replied, “I loved writing it!”. When another Hero desperately asked, “Does anyone know how to write a conclusion for a paper?” The former hero replied “YES!” The desperate Hero squeaked out a “HELP!” and off the two ran to work together. 
Through all this celebration, we aren’t ignoring the hard. We aren’t pretending the challenges and struggles don’t exist. We aren’t believing that we have it all figured out or that your heroes are perfect. But we are choosing to see the good and to celebrate the process and the moments and the progress. It’s easy to do this when we are surrounded by your heroes, are supported by you parents, and when we truly believe that “it’s fun to do hard things!”