A message to Grammar Zealots: I understand your pain, since I hear the Grammar Zealot’s siren call from time to time.

You may be a Grammar Zealot if:

• Your own grammatical mistakes embarrass you or you are horrified when your children use poor grammar in front of somewhat pompous Ivy League-like friends. (If you don’t have any pompous Ivy League-like friends, good for you!)
• Spelling errors made by others annoy you, and/or
• You are overly proud of your own handwriting, which looks like wedding invitation-style calligraphy and/or feel slightly superior because your spouse’s handwriting looks like hen scratching.

Here’s the deal:

1. Good grammar matters – a lot.  If you use poor grammar in written or oral communication, many people will dismiss you.
2. However – and this is important – we have found learning proper grammar is relatively easy for young people IF THEY CARE ABOUT WRITING AND SPEAKING.
3. But most young people learn to loathe writing and speaking if a parent constantly nags or corrects them about grammatical mistakes.

So our goal is to encourage powerful communication, delivered with proper grammar through the following:

1. Provide your Eagle with exciting writing and speaking challenges that include a public performance;
2. Offer a few world class examples; a recipe or algorithm for creating the final product and gamification to make it fun.
3. Make multiple drafts, critique and revision a part of the process and arm your child with forced rank critiquing templates – or far better, ask Eagles to create their own criteria and rubrics.
4. Add a final green-lighting step where submissions with poor grammar are rejected, and the penalties for re-submitting work to classmates grow exponentially more expensive for each re-approval.

If you are patient, and reward your child with Growth Mindset praise, his or her fellow travelers will provide the community,  incentives and coaching that leads to a desire  to write and speak well, and individual critique and gamified programs will deliver the tools to reduce grammatical mistakes.

So fellow Grammar Zealots – if you have my left brained, engineer like longing for perfection — stand down.  Find something else to obsess about.

When a Guide isn’t launching, he or she often has little to do.  Unlike a traditional teacher, the ways in which a guide can intervene in the studio are strictly limited.

However, guides do observe how individuals and the tribe are progressing as energy ebbs and flows, in order to offer leaders and individuals choices to increase the pace and fun of learning as the tribe matures.

 Below is a diagnostic framework guides use to help elevate the tribe:

1. What are you observing in the studio culture, in terns of energy, intentionality, cliques, civility and attention to excellence? (line one)
2. Does the data from Journey Tracker and posted on the studio walls verify or cast doubt on your observations with regard to tribal leadership, kindness, effort, excellence or intentionality? (line two)
3. Should you trust the Eagles or take an action to inspire, equip or connect? (line three)
4. Since you likely cannot act on your own, who will you approach? (line four)
5. What is your time horizon for addressing this issue and when did it occur? Is it an immediate or long term issue? (line five)
6. What action are you going to take? (line six)
7. How will you deliver your message to the tribe? (line seven)

When in doubt, guides default to the decision the furthest to the left, which allows heroes to sort out the problem:

Beyond choosing launch topics and influencing the systems guides have control by covenant over challenges, badges, Freedom Levels and can make suggestions to Council of different productivity hacks or changes in studio systems.

Two other sources guides use to check studio diagnostic health are the You Know You Are Visiting an Acton Academy checklist and AA Levers of Control.

Red flags

Below are some red flags that might suggest the need for a guide to hold up a mirror to the studio, interject with a launch (without scolding); post or suggest a new process or system; ask Council or Squads to act or inform parents.

• One or more heroes falling far behind in:
  • Genre or Quests
  • Khan
  • Servant Leader
  • Reading and DB
  • Or badge plans in general.
• Ignoring Freedom Levels and Boundaries (Silent Core Skills; Collaboration; Phones)
• A Toxic Eagle or parent[1]
• One or more heroes (often male) banding together in a Peter Pan mini-tribe, where social standing and “being cool” are held as more important than work.
• One or more heroes (often female) who begin to gossip or act cruelly toward others.
• Boys and girls beginning to cluster together.
• A lack of interest in excellence, suggesting peer audits may be necessary.
• A general sense of victimhood.
• Evidence of distraction from video games or web surfing, in violation of the studio contract and Freedom Levels.
• Lower Freedom Level heroes who are showing little progress, clustering during collaboration time, with an approved collaboration card from Squad Leaders.
• Not following Rules of Engagement in discussions
• Eagle Bucks being ignored or used to punish
• Refusing to follow the processes, recipes or templates offered in challenges.
• Lack of participation or low energy in discussions.
• A clear and serious interpersonal conflict that goes unresolved.

Guides ask: Which “lever of control” do I need to move when I see a red flag?

Belief

• Inspire with a launch
• Remind heroes of the importance of their Hero’s Journey with example, role models and personal testimony.

Boundaries

• Protect personal space
• Observe broken windows and reset intentionality with a mirror

 Incentives and Accountability

• Post individual or group progress
• Ask Council for an audit
• Post or specify a process
• Request council to change incentives: ST/LT
• Create a special challenge or outing

Interactive

• Coach the Council or a Leader
• Ignore a behavior
• Deflect a question
• Call for a Conflict Resolution

A Warning Against Too Much Guide Intervention

When the studio is humming and the tribe is enthusiastically challenged, learning occurs at an amazing speed.

It is important for a guide not to try and micromanage the studio.  Guide expect highs and lows and try at all costs not to intervene, even if the studio collapses.  Rebuilding the culture is one of the most valuable lessons learned by young heroes, even if it is frustrating for adults.

Generally, it is better for a guide to step back and let the situation deteriorate.  When it gets worse, a guide should step back again and have faith that eventually leaders will rise up and want to remedy the problem.  When the leaders emerge, a guide can offer choices and encourage the leaders to assemble a majority of heroes who support raising the standards before taking action, in order to isolate and split those who do not want to keep the studio sacred, respect promises and invest in a healthy culture.

Yes, guides answer questions not.  But with the right tools, it’s easy to see how a bit of nudging (carefully limited) can keep a studio humming…until it collapses!

[1] See Adam Grant’s Givers vs Takers.