Session 5, Week 3
I don’t like chocolate. Never have. As I got older, I recognized an intolerance to dairy. And nuts, I like them a lot, but they definitely don’t belong in ice cream! No chocolate? No dairy? No nuts? Most people do not want to share ice cream with me! I am so grateful when I walk into an ice cream store where they have a plethora of options – a flavor for my dairy eating, chocolate loving friends, a flavor for my friends who like nuts in ice cream, a non-dairy fruit flavor for me, the awful daiquiri ice flavor for my husband and the overly sweet bubblegum flavor for my daughter. With all our unique taste buds and different digestive systems, we all love different flavors of ice cream. With all our unique talents, interests, neural connections and gifts, shouldn’t a day at school have just as many flavors??
During CHOICE work cycle in the Spark Studio we follow the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Reggio Emilia embraces an idea encompassed by the phrase, “100 languages of children.” Children express themselves and understand the world in many different ways. It doesn’t mean each child speaks a different language, but that they can decode the world around them in many different ways. They learn through play and exploration,
and by making things with their own two hands. This week we learned about the assembly line and tried starting a factory with squads to create anything. Working in an assembly line highlighted some individual interests and talents.
In cooking, adding just a pinch of a new spice can enhance the flavor so it appeals more to some audiences. This week the materials available for CHOICE work cycle were now presented in the form of a skip counting market. Some things that may have been overlooked, were now exciting because heroes were excited to exchange the currency.
Heroes were motivated to earn money from completing challenges, and then they became entrepreneurs providing goods and services.
I heard:
“I’m making paper boats for money. They sell really good.”
and
“This is a good business! You are almost sold out!”
The influx of money in the market created inflation, and the concept of supply and demand was discovered without a teacher preparing a lesson about it.
Throughout the year, heroes have become familiar with the skip counting songs, but the meaning of those numbers has certainly penetrated deeper with the constant chatter of counting money and figuring out how much more they need.
A non-traditional play area combined with different weather, brings out many different flavors of outdoor play. This week we enjoyed the whole range! Monday’s snow inspired snowballs, and the very next day heroes were “sunbathing” and enjoying the melting slush in their recipes.
There was bug catching, soccer, and tag games like “among us”.
By the end of the week it was cold and rainy. While some were drawn to play games under the shelter provided by the picnic tables, others continued to build forts, play soccer, and ride scooters.
Every hero in the Fire Studio is unique. Each has goals and strengths and preferences of their own. For example, when celebrating leap year, some heroes choose to leap for “gracefulness” while others went for the distance. Allowing each hero to choose their goal made space for each hero to feel confident participating.
Morning schedule is designed to give heroes choices that will help them build their core skills and explore a variety of subjects. Those choices are equipping each young person with the tools and confidence to travel their unique Hero’s Journey at their highest level. It is fascinating as a guide to observe the different choices heroes make. Some heroes dive into Writer’s Gym – and really enjoy it – and are on track to finish their level well before the end of the year.
Other heroes choose to do the minimum 15-20 minutes of Writer’s Gym each morning so they can then spend more time on math and reading. Some heroes are even nearing their full Mathmind Badge for the year. Other heroes love the exploratory tables!
Some are writing pages and pages of their own stories or books, and anticipate the upcoming Story Club gathering where they will be able to read their works to a group.
Some heroes thrive in the peace and quiet provided by a blocker during Silent Core Skills hour, while others obviously can’t wait for the rowdier Collaborative Core Skills work time.
Many heroes enthusiastically participated in CHOICE Chess Tournament during collaborative core skills time this week, but it wasn’t appealing to everyone.
Most heroes look forward to either Sketch Comedy, Creator time, PE or Civ each week, and many heroes really enjoy all of them!
In quest this session, the Fire Studio heroes are trying out a new feature of Journey Tracker (it’s always been there, but we hadn’t used it at CHOICE yet), which is points. The challenges each week have a maximum point value attached to them (proportional to the difficulty of the task), and as heroes complete a challenge and have it approved by a peer, they discuss how many of the total available points their work should be worth. The accumulation of points has also earned them some personal office supplies and their individual points will be averaged to determine benefits their squad will receive as we move into the second half of the quest. Each day they’ve eagerly consulted the auto-generated bar graph in Journey Tracker to measure their progress. 
This week we had a discussion about the merits and the drawbacks of the points system. As expected, heroes had many different opinions. Some have found it motivating because they like to feel ahead of others or on the top. Others found it motivating because it gave them a visual with which to track their proximity to the things they could earn. Some found the comparisons discouraging and didn’t like the system. Some were frustrated with situations in which heroes seemed to be giving themselves a few more points than their effort was worth. Others found the guide’s opinion of how many points a particular challenge could earn to be incongruous with what it actually required. We concluded that no system is perfect, and what works and is motivating for some can affect others in a different way. They also came to realize that systems can only work with the investment of time and energy of the participants. The squad leaders performed a challenge “audit” at the end of the week, which was somewhat tedious, but both the auditors and the heroes being checked realized places they were falling short of their standards of excellence and completeness.
We also played lots of games this week to learn more about finance! Heroes could choose which games to play, as well as how they played them! Some read the rules fastidiously, other’s made up their own rules.
While they always understood that they could set their own goals and choose their own books to read, the heroes in the DELTA Studio are more and more grasping the idea of choosing their own flavors. I think they finally got the idea this week that their habits are actually supposed to help them and they can choose any habit they want! I am watching them dive more and more into their passions (or find out they are not passions) through Exploratory Works.
They are owning their systems and working to overhaul/simplify/clarify their processes (BTW, this is difficult to do!)
And they are getting more and more creative with P.E. in the bad weather. Who said we can’t play “tackle” musical chairs for P.E.?
Ever go to an ice cream shop and always get the same thing? Then someone says: “Try this” and then you love it! Quest is that beautiful opportunity to “Try this!” As we began this Quest, a few heroes commented that “Engineering and Coding is not their thing.” They liked studying the human body from last Quest. Others were happy to move away from the human body and were loving this Quest. There is a reason quest is a maximum of 6 weeks. It gives heroes a chance to sample a new flavor and find out if it is something they want to go back and get more of!
During the first 2 weeks of this quest, the DELTAs had a taste of Brainstorming, Researching and Prototyping. This week, many entered the Final Build stage of engineering and coding. It has been interesting to watch how some heroes could dive right into brainstorming with endless ideas, yet while researching became stumped because the ideas from stage 1 became overwhelming. Some wanted to skip the prototyping, and anxiously start on the final build only to learn they did need to go back and work out some small forgotten details necessary to the success of their final build.
Heroes are doing individual builds at this stage, yet always have the chance to collaborate and help each other. The teamwork has been beautiful to witness (especially when they remind each other to wear their safety goggles!).
A few DELTAs were not super excited about their initial build ideas and after 3 weeks of researching and testing, went back to the drawing board to create a new idea that sparked a fire. We heard comments shift from:
“I am not really liking engineering.” (During weeks 1 & 2)
To
“Look what I have done so far!!” and “This is turning out pretty cool”. (Week 3)
Look at how fun all their builds look…
Just like an ice cream parlor, CHOICE strives to provide plenty of flavors so that each hero can have their unique education experience; thus igniting self motivation, confidence and joy. We also strive to introduce heroes to new flavors so they can taste test and find out if they want more. Tasting (or learning) something new can open a whole new world of adventure. I love a good double scoop ice cream cone made of strawberry and mango sorbet, but even more I love a day full of the amazing heroes and flavors of CHOICE!