This week, we are going to cover Character Badges, which we call it “Servant Leader Badges” in one chart. Then, we will go to the updates!
Servant Leader Badges
Servant Leader Badges celebrate the development of heroic character. They showcase the habits, skills, and attitudes needed to accelerate your Hero’s Journey and earn more freedom and responsibility at Acton Academy.
Responsibility? For children? The #1 belief of Acton Academy: Everyone who walks in the door is a genius who deserves a Hero’s Journey. In a simpler word: we believe you are capable and can embrace the struggle. If you wondered that if the stage of “world leader” possible, the Acton Austin graduate, Ellie Carpenter is consulting Acton Academies all over the world this year! Here’s one video made by an Acton Academy owner who hired her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_QMNU8Xb8M
Weekly Updates
Spark/ PreSchool (PS) Studio
We’ve been sharing the PS studio week-by-week based on highlights. But what happens daily? Here’s their typical daily schedule.
Before 8:30 am
After the Eagles settled in, the first thing they do is: take certain responsibilities. And that includes time-keeping, choosing books to read, cleaning, and so on.
8:30 am – Outdoor Play
During outdoor play, they either do water play, climb trees, loose parts, sports games, or make use of the large green spaces. The play is dynamic. Early in the week, it was more of ships. On Friday, it evolved from a combination of battle games + role-play, into chasing, and then into team-based “harvesting acorn.”
9:35 am – Reflection
For reflection, Eagles rate their block time as positive (three stars), neutral (two stars) or not-so-good (one star). Sometimes, a Guide might follow through with exchanges.
9:45 am – Snack
10:15 am – Circle Time
Circle Time involves sharing about something recent, resolving it, storytelling, and also even team games.
10:30 am – Table Time (Montessori station activities)
Each Eagle has its own “playlist” based on their levels. The goal is to build competency of basic literacy by practicing the Montessori materials.
11:35 am – Reflection
11:45 am – Lunch
12: 15 pm – Free Play
Free Play is the part where the most interesting stories come out from the Eagles. Here’s a seven minutes window on “how to play a chair.”
It started with a 4-year-old Eagle, Aarav initiating a robot-like costume, which many followed. It evolved organically to a seat dance, a gym balance, and then a gang of motorbikes. It might seem that they are “close to danger” by hitting chairs on each other. But throughout these play, you can see precautions from their body language, and also awareness of their spaces.
1:20 pm – Cleaning Up
1:35 pm – Reflection
1:45 pm – Circle Time
2:00pm – Home
Throughout the day, I wondered how do the children move from one activity to another, and with varying degrees of energy. We recently had Daniel as our Guide, who the pent time to observe us (as part of a lengthy hiring process). With Daniel’s permission, I want to share his writing as he observed the Preschool studio with curiosity:
Just by being in that studio space, I got to follow their movements, which at times moved very fast and at times was in slow motion. It is like a dance between the ten children present that day. These are children who have acclimatized to the environment, and there is an established workflow and boundaries already.
So by following their curiosity, I witnessed that children just does as they pleased, like that there was no filter to issues like, “shall I do it or not” or “will it reflect well on me or not”. They decide and they proceed to do it and it is done and they move on to the next thing. No stops. And it is the same when they are interacting with other children or with adults.
For example, during water play, the child holding the hose, decided to use it to squirt another child and does so repeatedly. She expresses dislike and disappointment, but he continues to soak her with the hose. I allowed the scene to play itself out, checking with the Guide that this is going to be okay. The guide assures me that we step in only when there is danger. But as long as there is no harm done, then the play continues. In the end, the child with the hose never stopped squirting water and the child who was soaked, cried long and hard, and decided to withdraw from the water area altogether and proceeded to climb the longan tree with her other friends.
In such a way, I saw that they were curious of everything. Curious of how water works and continues to flow in a certain physical and fun way. They were curious about what happens when they pour water on themselves and on their friends and on people who they did not want to interact with in the water area. The child who was soaked was curious of what would happen if she continued to challenge the child with the hose and kept returning to the water area. The child with the hose was curious about what would happen if he continued to squirt the water and what would happen when he wanted “only boys in the water area”.
I felt so many emotions run through me during this time. I was cautious of not infringing some contract (unknown to me) that has been established in this studio (between the adults and the children and the children among themselves). As an adult, I have this overbearing protective instinct that I have to watch constantly – that I am just a watcher until they put themselves in physical harm or nearly does. I watch how their play escalates into drama and how it resolves – with the full knowledge that anything can happen. It was totally exhausting and at times I felt that the day would never end. In hindsight, I saw that it was a safe area. Things that might have happened did not happen.
I found that their curiosity usually leads them to test their own physical and emotional limits. Like how much higher they can climb the longan tree. Or how many more unripe longans they can gather compared to another climber. Or how long they can make their mothers wait before they agree to go home. And usually, they maximize themselves, and get to be all they can be. To be as wet as they want during water play, to be as funny as they can with their friends (and repeat the same jokes as many times as possible until the novelty runs out), to enjoy the same book over and over until it is done. To go all out in messing the place up during free play, but also to totally clean and pack up the place during clean-up time.
My journey in following their curiosity around that small area today took me to the extremes. I was uncomfortable and uncertain the whole of the journey. But it was a fun ride.
Thank you, Daniel, for articulating the daily ride of our Guiding journey :))
Elementary Studio (ES)
Field trip to Me.Reka Makerspace
Physics workshop with Uncle Sam
Project Planning
Crunch time! Eagles were busy researching, prototyping, setting daily goals and learning to track them for the exhibition.
Civilization
Over the week, the Eagles were tasked to interview their parents and then share it with other Eagles on Friday with a Family artifact. The Eagles came to ActonKL beaming, excited to share their newly found family history. The stories and artifacts connected them, closer— great-grandparents’ photos, baby clothes, first toy, a family treasure, etc.
“It was so fun listening about what my ancestors were like.”
“Did you guys know that my great grandparents were nomads?”
Middle Studio
The Middle Studio is grinding through a process of building their Sci-fi Genre story.
Sci-fi Genre
The Eagles have stamped the landscape, character, and the general challenges ahead. Now, it’s time to write the story, chapter by chapter. But how do you feel the story together and move forward in edits? Mere reading doesn’t cut. Why not learning by doing?
The Eagles role-played their story. The characters made decisions that determined the fate of their character. The Eagles split into two groups: the veteran Eagles, and the newer Eagles. In the beginning, the veteran Eagles struggled with their story flow, time management, and incoherent group dynamics. The newer Eagles produced more efficiently and saw how the story could unfold with surprise. The Eagles revealed their lack of preparation during the feedback round. Then, the Eagles agreed to play the same game, following the same rules and to participate fully. Being prepared, playing the game earnestly, and respecting the rules is a recipe of fun.
Still, many Eagles did not heed the feedback. In the next round, many Eagles lost Eagle Bucks, as the ROE (Rules of Engagement) Champion had a field day asking Eagle Bucks from Eagles whose actions do not bring the game forward. With pain as a reminder, the final two role-play sessions this week improved dramatically, and the role-play exercise worked like magic.
The key lesson learned: the character’s actions lead to their destiny. It’s narrating Acton’s learning philosophy:
Clear thinking leads to good decisions,
Good decisions lead to the right habits,
The right habits lead to character,
Character becomes destiny.
Physics Quest
The Guides prepared a projectile slingshot/cannon using garden furniture and some stationary rubber bands. And with the same kinematic equations from week 2, a hand full of Eagles worked through problems till the end. We were playing a physical version of the hit video game, Angry Bird. As with the game, the two things we can control is the speed and angle of the launch to reach the target.
After doing the experiments and calculations, let’s see if it works in the real world.
The final result was a success. Even the Guides were taken back by how well the calculations worked; they too never had the chance to do this type of real-world activity before. Well done to the Eagles who went through to the gruel of this upper-secondary level physics.
