We ask a lot of our Middle School Eagles: Quests; Deep Book Badges; Between the Lines Literary Analyses; Civilization Discussions plus Khan, Reading and Writing. Yet most find time to do so much more.
Take for example one MS Eagle who has started both the popular Computer Science Club and Film Club. Now he’s launched a Film Blog.
Who needs Godzilla to fight the forces of evil? We have Mason.
The last minute preparations were frantic – the final editing of films; the fine tuning of games; last minute pitch practice: all underway while Eagles simultaneously built their semester end portfolios and shared final “lessons learned” in a number of important areas.
And then it was showtime. The room filled with customers, and the game play began:
Pitches were made to real customers, with each Middle School Eagle trying not only to best their classmates, but to defeat the dreaded Elementary School Eagles competing alongside them.
Once the games were finished, it was time for the film festival to begin:
The smell of popcorn in the air. The anticipation of launching something you created out into the world, for all the world to see. Two noted filmmakers in the audience.
In the end, there were technical glitches. Two of the films weren’t very good; one was fantastic. An Oscar for the Best Picture and awards for the games were presented.
Yes, excellence matters. So does pleasing customers.
But how do you learn how to work in teams towards mastering a skill? By working on exceptional teams and teams that fail. How do you learn of the importance of setting and reaching milestones? By trying to do everything in the last week, and failing. How do you learn to set deadlines early enough to have a series of dress rehearsals? By failing to do so, and suffering the consequences.
Our Eagles have far to go, but oh they have come so far.
And the dreaded Elementary School competitors in the Game Expo? Final score: Middle Schoolers, a average of 2.9 votes per student; Elementary Schoolers, and average of 2.96. Beaten, but not defeated.
Now it’s time to rest, recharge and look forward to a rematch in the spring. For all real creative ability comes from challenge, failure, rebirth and the kind of steely perseverance that leads, in the end, to the excellence of a personal calling.
Now is a time to close some of the powerful learning loops we opened just a few months ago.
Last week, we started by closing the Art loop with an exposition of the Acton Dragons at Amy’s Ice Cream.
Monday, we closed the PE loop with the Acton Olympics, returning to the same challenges Eagles faced in September, to record new personal records (Thanks Coach C!)
On Wednesday, we close the loop on Projects, with the Game Expo and Film festival.
Below, yesterday Eagles practice and critique Game Expo pitches, with the Middle Schoolers feverishly working to defeat the Elementary School challengers by gathering more customer “votes” at the Expo.
All week we are recording reflections on “lessons learned” from Math, Reading, Writing, Building the Community, Science and the Pursuit of Excellence, as Eagles prepare their final end of semester portfolios for Thursday.
Then – on Friday — a review of next semester’s adventures and a final CELEBRATION!
What are the differences between logic, emotion and intuition? Can you imagine circumstances where you’d be wise to use one over the other to make the very best decision?
After pondering these questions in a Socratic discussion, Eagles dove into their core skills work, paying extra attention to their SMART goals tracking as they prepared their end-of-week wrap-ups. Jack won our Friday journal reflection contest, with his response to “What’s the hardest thing you did this week?” (finishing the production leg of The Bandit film; he was lauded by peers for his excellent word choice, details, and dash of humor).
The morning ended with a debate about whether or not humans should colonize Mars, a la Elon Musk’s long-term vision for SpaceX. Eagles implemented terrific discussion skills: “Building on what Mason said, …” “I STRONGLY disagree with Charlie…..”, “I agree with Jack, and I’d like to add….”. One usually vocal student stayed silent until the end: “At first I didn’t have a strong opinion one way or the other, but after listening to the points everyone’s been making, while I really see the value in what Charlie’s saying, I agree with Mason, because…”
It’s inspiring to observe these young men and women listening intently to one another, learning from their peers, and ultimately forming their own opinions.
While most of the Eagles played outdoors during free time, two – then three- then four as the desire to pitch in spread- stayed in to surprise their classmates with a pop-up dance and cupcake party, complete with streamers and helium balloons!
This session’ s theme of celebration seemed to have struck a chord. Special thanks to Ellie and Ana for their thoughtfulness.
After lunch, special guest filmmaker Brandon Dickerson joined us for an editing workshop- not a teacher lecturing to class about how to edit, but a professional bringing in his current project for a hands-on work session. The Eagles prepared by reading over the bit of screenplay (Scene 41) that corresponded to the footage they were going to watch, and examining a set diagram to imagine how the actors would move through the scene. After introducing his fancy new editing software while reminding us that all editing tools are basically “expensive scissors”, Brandon screened his footage. (Heated, of course) discussion ensued regarding which takes to use and how to cut them together to best tell the story.
Afterwards, during an abbreviated version of our usual Friday game time, a guide became so involved in an intense Boggle match that she forgot to keep an eye on the clock…. fortunately one of our student leaders realized it was five minutes past time to clean up for the weekend, and the Eagles worked together to get the job done.
Cooperation, respectful disagreement, spirited competition, and community celebration made for a fabulous Friday at Acton Academy!
Reading, writing and arithmetic – critical, fundamental skills, and our Eagles continue to progress faster than most middle schoolers – and thanks to Khan Academy and Shelfari, we have proof of their efforts.
But there’s much more to life, and thus should be much more to learning than the basics.
Like playing sandlot football before school starts.
Or in our morning discussion, exploring the right way to hold a film crew huddle, so you don’t waste your time in meaningless meetings (something I wish I’d learned a long time ago.)
Or as a task preparing Eagles for finding the right spring apprenticeship, having our My Hero’s Guide Mr. Temp inspire them with his drumming gifts as he asks: Are you born with powerful gifts or do you have to develop them?
Or having Allan Staker give his Hero’s story about the entrepreneurial ups and downs of starting a video-game company, a twisting tale about the risks and rewards of believing in yourself.
Yes, there’s far, far more to learning in the 21st century than simply the basics.
Tuesday mornings are core skills intensive, with an extra hour for students to work on foreign language, math, reading, and writing. Today they also used some of that time to meet in their film crews as the deadline for getting their projects green-lighted for production approaches.
Art provided a change of pace as students worked on their dragon drawings and studied dragon mythology.
It was election day, and a buzz of nervous energy permeated the room especially during project time when Ms. Samantha presented the opportunity to vote for or against an extra 30 minutes of morning silence in the classroom. Many students were surprised when, despite some preliminary polling that indicated a likely majority against that extra 30 minutes, the final count was in favor of a full hour of silence during core skills. Lesson learned: a poll is a snapshot of the present rather than an accurate predictor of the future.
Today, along with Core Skills and our Gaming Quest, we worked on critiquing skills.
Abigail began the day with our Halloween clad Eagles by asking: “Is it more important when pursuing excellence to practice hard or have a world class example?” and demonstrated how feedback improved a butterfly drawn by a six year old child.
We then each critiqued writing from the Eagle’s journals, so students could practice the art of writing as “re-writing.”
Ms Anna continued the day with a workshop on critiquing itself, using fresh baked zucchini bread as a tool to practice the four rules for critiques: (Be kind; Be specific; Be helpful; and Critique the work and not the person;) as well as a procedure for giving powerful feedback: (1) Presentation of work (audience is silent; presenter asks a focusing question); (2) Audience feedback (warm; cold; warm) and (3) Presenter reflection (comments on how and why the feedback was helpful.)
Eagles ended with a story boarding exercise, sequencing and editing photos to hone their storytelling and story boarding skills for the film project.
In between, Mr Temp held court as Curious George’s Man-in-the Yellow-Hat, discussing this week’s MyHJ “look-in-the-mirror” experience on loyalty (look closely, and you’ll see George in the background.)
Why can a few distracted students infect an entire learning community? Why is it so hard to keep the classroom clean?
Today we opened with a video on the Tragedy of the Commons and a discussion about why public spaces so often are abused. This was followed by video on Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, followed by a discussion of how a civil society helps intermediate between individuals and government, civilizing the first and restraining the latter.
These discussions, and observations by our MS Eagle “industrial spies” of the alien culture in the AA Elementary School, led our Eagles to propose changes in the classroom architecture and governance. Now we have “quiet zone” three sided cubicles (see http://rubble.heppell.net/places/ ) in one area and two other dedicated classroom areas, each with its own Mayor in charge of maintaining “focus.”
All of this led a a burst of productivity: in Core Skills; in 3D Game Lab and in the Film Project.
Intense focus in Core Skills.
Working on story boarding the Film Project (thanks to Matt Hovis for yesterday’s expert advice!)
Working hard to unlock the final “Does the past determine the future?” challenge in the 3D Game Lab quest.
Many outsiders have been skeptical when I predict we’ll find peer guiding and peer course creation to be far more powerful than using adult leaders. After all, who would believe that a middle or high schooler could be trusted with the learning of an younger student?
Today we had our first real test as two elementary school Eagles, Lazlo and Sam, came into the middle school to lead the six MS Eagles who had reached 50 skills in Khan in an introduction to the Manga High math program (our three MS’ers who graduated from AA ES already know Manga.) Given the round of applause at the end, the mission was a rousing success.
The Elementary Eagles invited the MS’ers to join them in a Manga challenge against a high school. Last year, the ES’ers made it all the way to third place in all of North America, competing against middle schools and high schools.
We worked hard this week on SMART goals and encouraging Eagles to set goals and hold themselves and their Running Partners for “giving their best.” We’ll continue that emphasis in the weeks ahead.
Ms Abigail pushed forward on the film project. Below an Eagle is presenting a specific filming technique he had researched, as Eagles discuss how they might use it in their individual films.
How bright is the future of our Eagles? So bright, they have to wear shades!
Core Skills time featured lots of work on Khan Academy, as well as the Eagles pitching their script ideas to the class. Later in the day, the Eagles voted to turn Charlie, James and Mason’s scripts into real films over the next few months
Later in the afternoon, Ms Anna continued to work with the Pope, Galileo’s team and our panel of judges to prepare for Friday’s trial, and Jasper’s dad David Herman came to give his Hero’s story about working in Hollywood, as well as sharing some tips on acting and directing.
We also implemented Pace’s idea of signalling what mode the class was in: Red for discussion time, with all Rules of Engagement in force; Yellow for collaborative time when students can mill around freely, as long as no one who is focused on work is being disturbed; and Green for free time. Interestingly, we calculated that in the average day Eagles spend 1-1.5 hours in Red (discussion) mode; 1.5 hours in Green (free) mode (including the 30 minutes before class officially starts); and 4-4.5 hours in Yellow (collaborative) mode.
Spending 5.5 to 6 hours intensely “on task” every day is the reason we can pack so much discovery and learning into a single day.
Core skills today was spent on Khan and developing pitch ideas for the film project. Then in Art, working to complete the Eagle’s portraits.
Then Mr. Temp joined us for a My Hero’s Journey session that will have each Eagle
keeping a promise journal, to record promises made and promises kept.
Project time continued work on the Galileo trial, with each Eagle writing an ethos, pathos or logos based argument, and auditioning for a role as Galileo or the Pope in Friday’s trial.
Oh yes, and the Eagles decided to make today crazy hat day.
Our Eagles love learning and being with each other. Now it’s time to aspire to excellence.
Inspired by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman’s NutureShock and Ron Berman’s An Ethic of Excellence, we are turning over even more responsibility for managing the learning environment to the three member Council and the Eagles themselves, but providing them with language to hold each other accountable (see below):
We also introduced a new accountability system run completely by the students themselves:
In Core Skills, students began planning and executing their Khan Academy lessons for the next nine weeks, by which time we expect every AA MS student to have demonstrated mastery in arithmetic and the other AA Elementary School Math skills (many students already have accelerated past this.) Ms Abigail continued guiding students in writing the storyline for their the “Past/Future” film project.
Ms Zoey continued the self portrait project in Art.
Ms Anna introduce the Galileo Trial debate, where over the next several days Eagles will research and assume roles to recreate Galileo’s dilemma of whether to advance or abandon his heliocentric paradigm, with real world consequences for all – either lost freedom for Galileo and his friends (lost free time) or lost riches for the Church (a loss of chocolate coins.)
Researching the trial of Galileo.
Today we started to consolidate all of the learning that’s taken place in the last four weeks, by beginning to reorganize and synthesize the portfolios in preparation for
Friday’s celebration.
Eagles also revisited and refilmed their paradigm mini-film projects, each choosing a scientific hero who changed the world by having the courage to introduce a totally new way of looking at the natural world.
Researching scientific heroes.
A rough draft of the timeline for 14 scientific paradigm shifts.
A pictograph of how scientific paradigms are related today.
Ms Abigail continued with the work on the major “How does the past determine the future?” film project.
Some nice words about AA MS from education disruption guru Carolyn VanderArk, who visited a few weeks ago:
http://gettingsmart.com/blog/2012/10/its-all-about-culture-acton-academy/
A pretty amazing two days of scientific experimentation “in the wild.”
We started our scientific expedition with a Socratic discussion on the one hour drive to the ranch. Eagles debated: (a) which of the six experiments we would conduct was the most important to the world (see previous post); (b) whether or not it would be because of the sheer value of discovery, invention or innovation; and (c) whether the scientific role of Paradigm Buster; Puzzle Poser or Data-Gatherer best suited their personal gifts.
Eagles also practiced their “paradigm video” stories, and in each car we developed “rules of engagement” as to how scientists would act on a real expedition (these would be combined to determine how we worked with each other on the trip.)
As soon as we arrived, it was time for science – and the chance to earn the ingredients for smore’s by solving scientific puzzles . Some photos from a few of the real world challenges:
Using trigonometry to find the height of a tree (also helpful for navigation.)
Levers – “Give me a place to stand and I’ll move the world!”
Using the Pythagorean theory for surveying.
Archimedes and buoyancy: “Is the crown pure gold or not?”
Even scientists need some fun – so we took a break for obstacle course practice and a swim in the river.
Below, Mr. Temp leads a Hero’s Journey session about picking role models for Stars and Steppingstones interviews.
Above, our experiments with Radians and the Heavens is thwarted by an overcast, but we were entertained by star gazing myths, smore’s and the Eagles’ gratitude moments. Some of us even got a few hours of sleep.
We ended the trip with a pre-dawn ceremony at the top of Lone Mountain – 360 degree views for miles around — with each Eagle leaving his or her gratitude object, and seeing for the first time the Founding Eagle’s plaque that will forever mark the pioneering efforts of this first Eagle Middle school class.
Then it was back to Austin, on the way listening to stories about Archimedes, Copernicus and Galileo, in preparation for next week’s debate. (And yes, a few Eagles even took a nap when we got back.)
Many thanks for all the parents and Guides who joined in for the adventure!
3. Finally, and most importantly, ask what behaviors would be appropriate for a scientist on an important scientific mission. Ask one student to keep a list that we can discuss when you arrive.
We lightened the core skills workload today, focusing our Khan work on the Pythagorean Theory in order to get ready for our “applied science” ranch trip on Wednesday
Ms Abigail continued her discussion with students about what makes a good story, including a “save the cat” moment to make your lead character likable. Eagles will be practicing their storytelling, writing and filmmaking skills, first honing their scientific paradigm stories, and then shortly thereafter beginning work on a separate film project that will require them to create, pitch, write and film on the question: “Does the past determine the future?”
During project time, Eagles broke into teams to make sundials, inclinometers and star finders that they will use to execute real world science experiments on the ranch.
