What do you typically hear during a day at Acton? A bee-like hum of learners in flow, a poignant battle cry for help, goofball giggles, kind reminders, and conversations about the process of our many Acton systems. Hearing is the first step but as we’ve discussed with learners many times, hearing and listening are pretty different. Listening involves all of you, all of your focus, and your desire to connect so you can understand. Listening is hearing plus more! This session, our amazing Acton Guides and I truly had to listen to the needs of learners and had to offer a rippling change.

“I have an idea!” This was the start of a conversation I had a few weeks ago with one brave Discovery Studio learner.

The Problem: He shared, “I’ve been thinking a lot and I really want to help my friend in the Spark Studio. I know he wants to move up to be with us in Discovery but he’s stuck on the Bob books; he needs to get better at reading.”

For the last few months my daughter and I have a bedtime routine. Teeth are brushed, pajamas on, stuffy selected, and then finally we are ready to get cozy and continue reading Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Tales of Extraordinary Women. The book includes gorgeously creative illustrations of 100 women and a one page story typically beginning with “Once upon a time…”. Pages include dates of each rebels life, country of origin, and one carefully selected quote. The pages are magical, every turn we have no idea who we will meet next, each story has us hooked!

What’s most magical about this routine isn’t the story, it is the opportunity that each story invites my daughter and I to connect, to be curious together, to compare a hero’s life to our own.

The school day ends and your learner hops in the car. Are they bursting with stories of the days happenings or are they tight lipped like a secret spy? As a parent of two, I am very familiar with asking “how was your day?” or “did you have a good day today?” More often than not when I ask these questions I receive one word answers “good” or “yes.” Despite my greatest efforts the lips of my secret spy kids will not budge, one word is all I’ll get. Early on in my Acton parent life I began to wonder “Am I asking the right questions?”

At Acton, we know learning is deepest and most memorable when experienced. This week learners journeyed through new terrain to explore boundaries, resources, and what happens when you are caught trespassing. Here’s a glimpse into their journey…

It’s Monday at 8:30am, the doors are shut between Spark and Discovery. All that divides the studios is one strip of orange tape, a border line.

This Monday, after a long winter break, learners returned to Acton a little taller, with less teeth, and also with greater confidence in what they want to accomplish at school. It was amazing to see each learner barrel in to the start of Session 4 with excitement and great determination. Day 1 a hard earned badge was earned, Day 2 two badges were earned, and Day 3 another valuable badge was achieved. This may be a new record of badges earned in a week! So, what is different? What lit the fire of learners to achieve?

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.