My 2nd week

(In the photo you can see the sweet library of the studio with the super cool bean bags that the Eagles have for reading time!)

This week, I was at Acton yesterday and today. Today, for the first time, I was completely alone (Alden wasn’t there) and led all the work in the studio. This experience was very exciting and intense for me.

In this post I decided not to go over every hour of the entire schedule, as I did in previous posts, but to tell you about key events from the past two days. In addition, I will write a separate post about levels of freedom at Acton because this is a very significant subject that I think deserves a post of his own.

1. Core skills: From the beginning of the week, the Eagles began to learn reading, writing and math for about two hours each day. As I’ve already described in the past, core skills are taught via virtual software programs. At the beginning of the time allotted to core skills, the Eagles set goals for themselves, which they are supposed to meet throughout the day. The Eagles set these goals in Acton’s dedicated software program, which, according to their reports, also calculates how many points they receive for each task they perform. I cannot describe just how inspiring the Eagles’ virtual learning is for me. For example, Eagles study math through Khan Academy or Alex. Imagine an Eagle sitting in front of a program developed by the best engineers, programmers and mathematicians in the world,and she studies the most relevant material for him/her by himself/herself and at his/her own pace. This is amazing!!! Whenever I sat in the studio during the core skills session, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the usual method of a teacher teaching math was simply illogical! Same applies to reading and writing studies (taught by an amazing program called “Lexia” and more programs) The Eagles move at the right pace for them, they don’t get stuck on subjects they do understand and other Eagles don’t and can delve deeper and deeper into subjects they understand the least. One of the interesting phenomena is what a guide does whenever one of the Eagles calls him because “he did not understand something”. The Eagles should first try to solve the problem themselves, and then watch an explanation video in the software, then ask one of the other Eagles and if all these strategies fail, call the guide. I will give you a hint: in most cases, one of these strategies works. When they did call me for help, I did not answer the question directly. I asked the Eagle what he tried, what, in his opinion, could he try now, and I generally reflected the situation to him so that he could find the solution himself/herself. Sometimes, by the way, especially with the young Eagles, you just have to sit next to them and watch them work, which in itself gives them enough motivation and confidence to solve the problem. The whole experience for me was some kind of “enlightenment”. I read a lot about this way of learning in the past, but only when I experienced it myself today with the Eagles did I realize how dramatic of a change it is from the way of learning I know from other schools.
2. “Contract Game”: One of the significant activities that the Eagles worked on this week is the contract game. Their goal at the end of the first session is to create a contract that everyone agrees on, which will be the governing contract for the year. I really liked the way the contract was formed: In the first stage, the Eagles gave lots of ideas for different rules, and each rule was written on a separate note and attached to the clipboard under the title”Basket 1″. Then from all the sentences in basket 1, the Eagles chose the more meaningful ones to them and moved them to basket 2. They’ve prioritized all the sentences in basket 2 in order, and they grouped similar rules together. During the next stage (which took place yesterday and today) we went over the first rules on the list and tried to understand in depth how important each one is, and what it symbolizes. From these sentences, the Eagles will select a small number of rules at the beginning of the next week and will try to work according to them for a few days to see how they feel about them. The Eagles take this very seriously. Each rule is carefully considered, each Eagle has an opinion on what is more important and what is less important (for example, is it more important to be kind or appropriate, does “respecting the studio” include “respecting the guides” or should it be in a separate rule, etc.). It’s very fun to watch these discussions from the side and I’m learning a lot about the interesting dynamics that develop in them. Today I have led such a discussion and I am proud to say that in my opinion, it went quite well.
3. “Town Meeting” – Once a week, on Friday’s, a town meeting is held. Today we presented the concept to the Eagles and we also held the first meeting. The idea is that each Eagle can bring a subject she wants to talk about in the presence of everyone in the meeting. If the Eagle brings a problem,she must also present at least two solutions. Today, two wonderful ideas were brought up: the first was a request to take the books home from the studio library. The second idea was to allocate half an hour of sleep time in the middle of the day. The first idea was postponed to the next week’s meeting because it was not sufficiently developed. The author of the idea was asked to come up with a more complex model (which will answer questions such as who records the books taken, what happens if a book gets lost, etc.). The second topic was discussed with great seriousness, and eventually, a majority decision was made to allocate 10 minutes for meditation every day, with the aim of relaxing and refocusing. How exciting is that, right???
4. Studio maintenance – It is important for me to emphasize this point, because it is so significant to me. Every day, for fifteen minutes at the end of the day, the Eagles clean the studio. This cleaning includes vacuum cleaning all rooms, collecting garbage, throwing garbage bags in the trash bin outside, returning objects to their place, arranging the library and dusting. Every day, the Eagles perform this task happily, easily and finish it quite quickly and with very impressive results. This is so important in my opinion, the fact that the Eagles are responsible for their space and are also responsible for its cleanliness. The message that is passed on to the Eagles, yet unspoken, is one of great personal and group responsibility.
5. Writer’s workshop – Writer’s workshop takes place for an hour and a half, twice a week, every week. The subject that Alden chose this session was ‘Letters of different kinds’ (Thank you letters, apology letters etc.). This week we started with ‘Thank you letters’: The Eagles learned what are the important elements of ‘Thank you letters’, read example letters, and then wrote their own drafts. As part of the workshop, at the beginning, the Eagles write the points they want to describe, then they write the first draft and, if needed, a second one, and then copy the finished product to a clean page in beautiful handwriting. It was so beautiful to see the progress of the Eagles (especially the younger ones) from the first draft, which was messy and full of spelling mistakes to the final product. Eventually there were some very charming and moving letters, and this skill of writing thank you letters is very relevant and practical in my opinion and I loved it very much.

I can write much more, but I shall stop here.

You are welcome to ask questions and write comments! I will be very glad to answer.