Week 1: Choosing a Hero's Journey

This Tuesday afternoon we gathered as a community for our Welcome Celebration - an annual tradition wherein families come back together after a summer away, reconnecting with old friends and becoming acquainted with new.

We ate, we hugged, we laughed, we wrote notes to our future selves and sealed them in a time capsule, to be opened at our Closing Ceremony in June....we even went on a wild ride on the "Acton Bus"! Each one of these courageous travellers hopped on "the bus", making a tough A or B choice at each stop and voting with their feet. This fun game was a great opportunity for us each to learn a bit more about our fellow travellers on the Acton Journey.

It was also a wonderful segway into the theme of our Welcome Celebration this year; Choice. At Acton Academy, we know our lives are an accumulation of all the choices we make. Our choices become our habits. Our habits form our character. And our character determines our destiny.

Knowing this, it becomes clear that one of the most important skills our children can hone is the ability to make courageous, clear, thoughtful choices when faced with tough dilemmas.

Children who attend Acton Academy are trusted with the great responsibility of making many choices throughout their days and over the course of their journey. Some of these will be "good" choices - choices that lead you further down a good path for you, and some will not. Here, children are given the opportunity to fail cheaply, early, and often, benefiting from the deep learning that comes from each choice and reflecting on whether that choice brought them further down a good path, or if they need to course correct.

There is a moment for every hero on a Hero's Journey where they receive a call to adventure - an invitation into an unfamiliar world where they will meet great challenges and triumphs, monsters and mentors; a promise of something extraordinary and transformative, but which involves an element of risk and demands great courage.

One of the first choices we all make on this journey is the choice to cross the threshold into this unfamiliar and extraordinary world of Acton; a courageous departure from the familiar, traditional world of education. In doing so, we each are choosing to uphold certain promises - the promises Chris and I make to each family and hero who entrusts us with this great responsibility, the promise each guide has made to socratically guide these heroes on their own unique journey, the promise each parent has made to trust and celebrate their child, and the promise the heroes make to themselves and their fellow studiomates.

These promises form the core of our community, and to symbolize our commitment to these promises, each family was invited, one by one, to cross the threshold, paint their palms, and make their mark on our wall.

Each day as we enter our studios, this wall will serve as a beautiful reminder of our commitments, to ourselves and to one another.

A wise man once said, "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Thank you for taking this first step with us, on what is sure to be an incredible Hero's Journey.