The national organization, Education Reimagined, shined a light on Acton Academy Oshkosh and our Director Dr. Sharon Tenhundfeld Chmura-Moore. They were curious about her journey from music to K-12 education and we’d like to share this conversation with you! Below is the article and we encourage you to visit Education Reimagined’s website to learn more about the learner-centered movement and the amazing schools and practitioners that are changing education across the nation.

Every Pokémon has special powers that help them win battles and evolve into their future self! You could say that Pokémon have gifts and talents that they share with the world just like heroes, just like our Acton learners.

As we planned our January Pokémon camp we kept realizing the hero’s journey parallel. So, naturally Pokémon camp developed into Pokémon/Hero camp.

“Practice makes perfect” is the classic saying but if you are practicing and fail how will you ever reach perfect? If you are feeling like a puddle how can you get enough courage to climb the mountain towards success? Yesterday I had the privilege of this exact conversation with a learner. Here’s how we got there….

A successful captain exudes quiet confidence and brings out the best in both themselves and their fellow mariners. Being a captain is a tough job as you never know when you may encounter rocky waters or alluring pirates. Pirates can appear fun but ultimately they steer a captain off course by stealing the greatest treasure of all, your attention. Who will you be today a captain or a pirate? Where will you steer your ship, what is your path to find your treasure? These are the questions we’ve been asking learners the last few weeks both in Core Skills and now in our Entrepreneurship Quest.

“What are you passionate about?” This was the first question posed as learner’s began Session 3’s Entrepreneurship Quest. As learners went around the circle answering this question it was amazing to witness the glow that filled their faces as they proudly shared “soccer, art, nature, my family, reading, swimming, Pokemon, cooking”. Passions are simply the start. Passions coupled with a real-world problem makes way for an amazing entrepreneurial opportunity.

Passions + Problems = Business Idea

A hug, a high-five, picking up a friend’s dropped puzzle pieces, cheering “you are so close, I believe in you”, or simply saying “thank you” are all acts of kindness that although simple have the ability to positively change another person’s moment, day, or life. It’s hard to know the impact your kindness will have on others and even the impact it can have on yourself. The ripple effect or perhaps the boomerang of kindness begins with one act—learning to do—saying or doing kind things every day.

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.

Po, the proclaimed dragon warrior was simply a Panda that loved noodles. So, how did Po become the ultimate Kung Fu Panda Master? The process wasn’t easy, Po had many external and internal challenges but he also had fellow travelers (the fantastic five) and mentors (Grand Master Oogway and Master Shifu). Just like Po, learners at Acton are on their hero’s journey and their mentors include Guides and YOU, parents!

“Logic will get you from A to Z; imagination will get you everywhere.” —Albert Einstein

The journey of Session 2 began this week and the walls of Acton are bursting with questions, experiments, and tinkering, tinkering, tinkering as learners assumed their newest role as Toy Scientist, more specifically Physicist. It was amazing to experience how a simple white lab coat and a pair of safety goggles can transform even the youngest learner into a serious professional. Learners took their Owl observation skills to the max while testing toys such as rubber duckies (buoyancy) and slime (elasticity). While walking through the Toy Lab you would see learners evaluating, testing, and recording their observations and you would hear this gem of a discourse…

A gaggle of geese, a murder of crows, a parade of elephants, or for our Acton Owls, a parliament of owls. Our owl mascot was chosen before our school opened and was driven by an inspiring art piece that lives at school, the fun O alliteration of Oshkosh Owls, and ultimately the gut feeling that owls are wise and young learners are the wisest people we’ve encountered. A parliament is also a democratic legislative body of government that makes and oversees laws. As we close our first session Quest of Building the Nest the word parliament seems even more apropos.

“How do you know learning will happen, won’t they just goof off?” “If learners are in charge of the school doesn’t it turn into Lord of the Flies?” These are the top two questions I am commonly asked about Acton and perhaps you are still wondering how the learning environment founded on freedom really works. The answer is simple, learners have freedom within a structured system of boundaries.

The soul of an Acton Guide is to ask questions but every who, what, where, when, or why isn’t created equal. Some questions are better than others because of their magical power to empower learners to take action. By definition the word empower means to “make someone stronger and more confident, especially in controlling their life and claiming their rights.” This week our Guide team and I tinkered with finding magical questions that empower learners to claim who they want to be.

When a learner has a splinter stuck in her finger or when a learner is missing his Mom for the third day in a row and is at a loss for words I often ask “do you trust me?” Honestly, I need to know. I need to know what faith they have in me before I say or do anything next. I’m always so taken by the beautiful big eyes that look back at me and the sweet chin that dips down and up signally “yes, I trust you with everything I have.” It is this trust that I safeguard and it is because of this big-eyed and whole-hearted trust that I and all our Acton Guides are committed to reciprocating trust. We trust learners even in the hardest times.

We dream of the future, we make a wish as we blow out our birthday candles, and we throw a lucky penny in the fountain in hopes that our beautiful and powerful desires become reality. But dreams and wishes are hopes not action. We must take specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound steps if we want to reach our dreams. We must be ready and set a S.M.A.R.T goal.

Wise author, coach, and speaker Tony Robbins shared that “setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible” and this week learners took visible steps forward on their heroic journeys. For some learners, the simple process of identifying “what is my goal, what do I want to accomplish?” was challenge enough. For others the challenge was to flesh out all the details of what, how, when, and why.

“This is so different, it’s different than when I’m home…I’m not used to so many other kids!”

These were the honest words shared by a young big eyed Spark Studio learner this week. While everyone was in the midst of a group activity this learner turned and shared her observation with me and all I could think was —WOW, she’s spot on, yes, this is different! Struck by her honesty I decided to ask “Is different good or different bad?” She thought for a minute and beautifully said “I don’t know, maybe both”.

What has this year meant to you? What has this past year at Acton meant to your child? If you are continuing on your hero’s journey with us next year or if you aren’t how will your Acton experience be part of your life journey? What were your highlights, your challenges? Are you different today than on the first few days of the school year? How, in what ways are you different?

Sometimes, it can be scary to reflect. Did I accomplish all that I hoped? Maybe not, maybe so, but hopefully you were able to gain along the way. Give yourself a moment right now as an Acton parent and ask yourself some of these questions or perhaps others. Give yourself the space to reflect and hopefully honor the hard work you put in, the hard work of your child, and the hard work of our collective community as we embarked on this journey of the year together. Today we celebrate a milestone, the end of Session 7 but more importantly the end of our school year. During this beautifully, new, hard, but wondrous year we have found a minimum of 5 nuggets of shared treasure.

Our community is rich, full of experts, masters, and heroes ready to share their journey and experience with learners. This past April a very special and inspiring hero visited Acton and what developed was a fun, creative, and inspiring collaborative process!

It all started with a need. “We need art!” Art makes a space, a school, a home, feel lived in and inspiring. Rather than searching online for that perfect Etsy art to fill our white-walled school lobby we knew there was a greater opportunity right here in our community, a local artist.

What is a goal? A goal is something you set your sights on, something you want to achieve by working hard with lots of effort. Do we need to work towards a goal? No, absolutely not! But, it’s the freedom to choose to put forth effort and continually set goals that may change everything!

It only seems fitting that this week we celebrate our country’s independence and the ratification of the Spark Studio rules, in fact now known as the Spark Studio Constitution. After learning about the process of creating the US Constitution and how this important document has and can be amended, learners revisited their rules and took stock of what is and isn’t working and what freedoms need protecting. The result was beautifully messy democracy. Instead of 9 rules, learners amended and ratified 14 studio laws and agreed on consequences of breaking the law. All learners signed their name to their Constitution agreeing to both follow the rules and enforce the rules.

So, what happens when learners are given the responsibility of upholding their rules? You guessed it, conflict emerges yet not too far behind courage follows.

Remember the last time you saw a butterfly, what did it do? How did the sight of the butterfly make you feel? Were you surprised; were you inspired to look at the world with slightly different eyes in that moment? What happened after your surprise butterfly?

All week we’ve explored the process of pollination and all week I’ve been noticing the similarities of our owls with our very important pollinators. The way bees, bats, birds, and butterflies spread pollen is a lot like the way our owls spread joy.