Yay, we made it! We are now three weeks into Sprint 1. Our Eagles are slowly getting into a rhythm, navigating through their daily schedule and understanding Acton’s systems and processes.
We started the week with a teambuilding challenge called Trust Walk on Monday morning. During this activity, half of the Eagles were blindfolded and then paired up with the half who could see. The Eagles who could see took their blindfolded partners on a tour around the house. After five minutes, they switched roles and the other partner now wore the blindfold. In our community at Acton, every Eagle will rely on one another in various ways throughout our journey together. Even though we are all on our Hero’s Journey, we share a space, we make promises together and we keep each other accountable. The Trust Walk highlighted how much we can and need to trust and depend on one another.
Eagles bumping into one another during the Trust Walk activity
Our youngest Hero on his tour around the house
This week, we continued to work on setting SMART Goals. Eagles met with their Middle School buddies on Monday to help them set their goals for the week. On Friday, they would meet back again to check in on the progress and challenges of these goals.
SMART Goals for the week
During Circle Time discussions every day, Eagles were challenged to abide by the Rules of Engagements (RoE). Earlier during the week, they have voted on two rules to try out in the studio. Many times, they would forget about the rules when they got excited to share their thoughts or when they got distracted with their friends’ comments but everyone is learning to remind each other of the rules. Parents, feel free to practice these RoE with our Eagles at home! 🙂
Rules of Engagement to practice for the week
At the park, Mr. Jia played the Eagles’ favorite game, “Ice and Fire”, with a twist. Mr. Jia made them throw balls and freeze as Super Heroes as part of the game. The energy was extremely high!
Frozen in Superhero “Ben 10″ move
Eagles discussing the rules before “Ice and Fire” started
Play time! Every day, the Eagles get thirty to forty five minutes of free play time. They would often run around and play “Ice and Fire” or “Virus” (the Eagles invented them!) around the house. Over the past week, a couple of arguments happened. There were cases of Eagles kicking, punching and pushing one another when playing games (the things you would expect children to do :)). As much as I wanted to be in control of the situation and break out the arguments immediately, I stood aside and quietly watched them from afar. There were tears, finger-pointing, discussions and finally, resolutions. The Eagles would talk it out amongst themselves, apologize for their actions, and sometimes even decide to vote for a solution. Only when the Eagles asked for my help in solving the disagreements, did I ask them the questions such as “Are we kind to one another?”, “Is this the right thing to do?”, “Is this the type of community we want to build?” to help them understand the impact of their actions.
It can be very frustrating to watch them without intervening immediately because as adults, we think we know the better way to solve these problems. However, as a guide, I believe that we should always step back, give them the safe space to fall and allow them the chance to solve these problems themselves so that they can grow to become independent individuals.
Secretly spying on their voting session!
On Friday, we ended our Circle Time with our weekly Character Call-Outs. For the first time in three weeks, all Eagles sat down in a circle (including my two usual suspects who are always on their own adventure), fully focused, abided by the Rules of Engagement and participated actively in thanking their friends! I was secretly smiling inside. 🙂
Week 4, here we come!
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