We've had an unusually dry January and we're here for it! This week we took advantage of the gorgeous winter weather and spent a lot of time outdoors; whether it was cleaning up the river, climbing trees, molding clay foraged from the river shore, or building fortresses from our loose parts play area!
We celebrated a special birthday this week; our assistant guide Ella turned 19 and it was so much fun going through her photos (one for each year of her life), learning about her favourite things, and making heartfelt birthday cards to send her home with.
Our exploration of heroic people and heroic character traits continues, and this week we read the true story of Dashrath Manjhi, the man who moved a mountain. Armed with only a hammer, chisel, and unwavering determination, Manjhi spent twenty years carving a path through a mountain that separated his impoverished village from the nearby one with schools, markets, and a hospital. Manjhi Moves a Mountain illustrates how the power of one person's resolve can bring about profound change, as long as their heart is vast enough. Following the story we had a Socratic discussion and pondered the following question: What was the most important element in that path becoming a reality; Manjhi allowing himself to dream such a bold dream, or having the grit and resilience to follow through with it?
Hearing Manjhi's story lit a fire in these heroes and they jumped into their goals with a renewed sense of possibility. Day by day, they're chipping away at their core skills (reading, writing, and math) programs, cheering each other along the whole way. I've watched these young people tackling challenging books, grappling with division and early algebra, and working diligently to perfect their penmanship. Their progression has exceeded my wildest dreams.
When we embarked on this journey in September 2024 we had a mixed group of learners ranging in age from 5 to 8 years old. Most of our youngest heroes were at the very beginning of their academic journey, while all of our older learners were struggling on this path. Our plan for this academic year was to focus on the core skills (reading, writing, and math) with the aim of setting a solid foundation for our younger learners and enabling the older ones to "catch up" so that next year we may offer the exciting, experiential quests that are such a big part of the Acton elementary experience; quests that require a basic level of reading which none of our heroes were at. Never in my wildest dreams would I have anticipated that in just three short months our older learners would have gone from barely reading CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) books to tackling chapter books! In short, these heroes are ready for the next step in the journey, and our incredible new guide Morgan is hard at work setting up an exciting quest for them in the coming weeks.
Worth noting is that this incredible progression occurred in just 90 minutes per day of academic work. The rest of the time was dedicated to deep Socratic discussion (fostering critical thinking skills), SMART goal setting, weekly Town Hall meetings (to discuss studio culture, bring forth issues and proposed solutions, decide via votes), conflict resolution strategies, studio maintenance, and of course, Spark Play.
Spark Play, the hours dedicated to completely free, unstructured play each afternoon, is always a highlight for these heroes. This week they turned a box of toilet paper rolls into wings, binoculars, gauntlets and arm-mounted laser beam mechanisms! It's in moments like this my heart swells with gratitude. Reading, writing, and math; these are important life skills we all must learn, no matter what our path in life turns out to be. But let's not forget about childhood. The pure magic of their imagination. The fact that this window in life, this window of intense fantasy and creativity, where a rainbow slinky really does turn into a laser beam mounted arm gauntlet, where you really are a dragon avoiding capture by villainous dragon hunters, where you really do have all the magic powers in the world, is so, so very short. They do not get this time back. They cannot make it up down the road. The time is now. Let's let them live and thrive in this incredible world while they can. There's good stuff there.
In the words of Albert Einstein, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, "Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere."
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