Now that the student “contract of promises” and “rules of engagement” have been drafted and signed, it’s time to choose leaders and start establishing classroom norms as habits.  This is difficult work.

Today we introduced a system of “prices” designed to encourage Eagles to practice the key skills of “listening respectfully” and “respecting our studio space” that were promised in the contract and rules of engagement.

Here’s how it works: (1) Each student received three poker chips for the week; (2) every time a student violates one of the listening practices, he or she must give up a chip; (3) if ever a student violates a listening covenant and has no chips left, the entire group looses a special lunch treat on Friday; (4) you may give someone else your chips, but also may require a special promise in return.  (5) If the studio isn’t ready with “everything in its place” by 8:30 AM every morning, everyone loses a chip.

Students also received a new weekly goals sheet, with special points for setting and reaching individually set reading, writing and math targets.  If the class as a whole scores enough points during the week, they earn free time on Friday.

The effect?  Core skills time went from a noisy and sometimes out of hand experience, to having fourteen students completely focused, each managing their own tasks and goals, with the room completely silent.  One student said: “It was great.  I was in ‘flow’ for over an hour and a half.”

Step by step, we’re developing leaders with powerful learning habits.

The focus in project time was extending today’s journalling question of: “Should leaders be chosen because of popularity, skills or character?”  There’s a great deal of energy around this question, because Town Council elections are the end of this week.

Eagles tackled three different types of challenges: (1) 80/20 Pareto challenges with the “poker chip” pick up and “big rocks” experiment, where you had to learn to focus and shift to capture the most value, under time pressure; (2) A paint-by-the numbers challenge where you had to consider aesthetics and the of completely finishing; and (3) A “defuse the bomb” challenge where you had to be precisely correct, or there were catastrophic consequences.

Eagles developed strategy “rules” for each of the different challenges, kept track of the points scored by each team, and discussed which type of challenge they were best suited for as a leader, and how cost, benefit and risk affected the various strategies.

Tomorrow we shift from “one off” challenges to process based decision making.