Hero Community
The hero’s journey isn’t just for young learners, every person, and parent who steps through the doors of Acton are on their hero’s journey to find a calling and change the world. Changing the world isn’t always a monumental movement instead it may take a few small steps and a little momentum. This Wednesday Acton parents began their journey and took their first steps toward building a community of fellow travelers in our very first parent meeting of the year.
At Acton, school is nontraditional and therefore parent meetings offer a slice of the Acton experience, a day in the life of your child and an opportunity to build your own parent hero community. Brave parents spent one hour reflecting and connecting on what motivates them, what motivates their child, and then got to roll up their sleeves with a hands-on challenge to create and race a car, the physics version of motivation.
What happens when you give adults and children the same challenge? One things for sure, parents tend to take more time hypothesizing and strategizing and above all worrying how they will measure up against the competition. Every parent partner group sent a car down the racetrack (surprisingly with final edits in the last seconds) yet I couldn’t help contrast the process of creation between adults and their children.
Children dive right in! It’s amazing how bravely and confidently they explore the creativity of trying without the gravity of judgement. Children fail fearlessly and offer a wonderful reminder to us adults. Fail hard, fail often, and fail cheaply—luckily these cars were made out of cardboard and bottle caps, a low budget project! The momentum of failure is what makes learning and life meaningful, the journey of a hero.
We ALL are heroes, child and parent, and what held great meaning that day was the exchange of hero notes. Prior to the meeting I asked each learner if they were a hero, all confidently said “YES!” Then, I asked if their parents were heroes and I got more yes’s and then asked how? They wrote a note for their parent such as “You are my hero because you are kind” “you are strong and give me great hugs” “you help me problem solve”. I had the joy of delivering hero notes to parents and greater joy delivering notes back to learners later that afternoon. My secret spy self may have gained the greatest reward, the opportunity to witness the joy and pride in the eyes of each parent and learner as they realized that they were a hero to one another. Child—“You are my hero because you are strong and give me great hugs.” Parent—“You are my hero because you explore with me and I love seeing the world again through your eyes, I’m proud to be yours.”