Week 31: Badges, bubblegum, and a new mountain to climb

As we near the end of our first year at Acton Academy Nanaimo, many of us have our eyes on the horizon and are looking toward this upcoming September. Our guide Morgan has been working tirelessly on preparations and we're thrilled to share that our Discovery Studio (ages 7-12) will be up and running - ready to receive curious, courageous, and capable young people on a journey of a lifetime! This studio will engage in regular deep Socratic discussions about Civilization (history), embark on immersive, experiential 4-6 week long Quests covering topics such as ancient Greece, Marine Biology, and Cartography (to name a few), weekly art projects, creative writing challenges, and much more. In order to show readiness for this exciting challenge, on Monday morning our heroes were introduced to the "Climbing Mt. Discovery" challenge, wherein they will prove to themselves and their studiomates that they're up for the challenge of the Discovery Studio. This challenge involves setting intentions and goals, tracking points for daily Core Skills work completed, earning the required badges, and writing a letter that meets a specific rubric to prove preparedness for the journey ahead. Many jumped at this opportunity and the level of intentionality in the studio immediately shot up. Having a compelling goal and a meaningful "why" reignited their drive, and in no time the Badge Bell was ringing and badge crests were being filled up.

For our fourth week of the E-Ship Quest we sailed on to Economics Island! The goal of this island is to is to understand the concepts of costs, profits and losses. Once finished with Economics Island learners have a clear understanding of how much it will cost to make their product and how much they will charge. To kick this off, our studio was visited by the Bubblegum King! The Bubblegum King sold us packs of bubblegum for $2.00/package with no fixed number of pieces in each package. Each piece of gum cost him $0.05 to make and the packaging cost $0.10 per package. Our challenge was to select a package and figure out how much profit the Bubblegum King made off of our individual pack, then to add up the profit he made off each studiomate to come to a total profit for his sale of bubblegum to Acton Academy Nanaimo. This fun exercise introduced our young studio to the concept of costs, revenue, and profit. Our next challenge was to decipher our Product Materials cost - what was it going to cost to make our product for the mini-market? Then, how much would we charge? Finally, our learners were offered the challenge of determining their unit cost - how much would it cost them to produce one unit of their product? Does this information change what we planned to charge at the mini-market?

This week we celebrated a special birthday as one of our heroes entered her era of double digits! We had so much fun celebrating her, sharing hand-made cards, singing our special birthday song, seeing photos from each year of her life, and learning about her favourite things. After we each made a wish for her and she and blew out her candle, it was time to celebrate...this time with ice cream! Traditions such as this are a valued and impactful part of life at Acton Academy. It strengthens the bond between these young people, bringing them closer and closer together each time and contributing to the unique culture we're creating.

Afternoons were spent almost entirely outdoors - basking in the beautiful sunshine, collecting treasures from the river, foraging wild mint, lounging in hammocks, and preparing personalized parking stalls for parents :)

On Friday morning we had our weekly Town Hall meeting. The first order of business was an emotionally charged one, as two of our heroes suggested banning swords from the school altogether. To give this some context, at Acton Nanaimo we acknowledge the benefits of and welcome engagement in "risky play". A favourite pastime of many of our heroes is running through the field wielding swords and shields, fighting off monsters and bad guys. There are safety guardrails put up around this type of play (ie: swords only touch other swords, not bodies, only with those who are part of the game, etc.), but inevitably accidents do happen and sometimes someone gets hurt. This suggestion brought up a deep conversation about risk, whether one should have the ability to choose to participate in risky play or not? Solutions such as a "sword play zone", age and/or maturity level restrictions placed on who can engage in swordplay, and potential consequences for someone who causes injury were all discussed. In the end, as nearly half of our group was absent (many of whom would definitely have something to say about this!), we agreed to postpone making any decision until Tuesday when the rest of the group was present. This brought us to our next order of business - a proposal for Crazy Hair Day! The suggestion was met with a resounding YES and the date was set; Tuesday May 6th will be our inaugural Crazy Hair Day at Acton Academy Nanaimo!

Next week will be full of fun activities as we prepare for Thursday's mini-market, where friends and family will have the opportunity to witness and experience the results of all their hard work over these past 4 weeks. Over the course of this quest we've discussed many aspects of entrepreneurship, including the risk and courage involved. Each one of these heroes is showing a tremendous amount of courage, putting their product and themselves out there to be accepted or rejected, valued or dismissed. It's something each and every entrepreneur must face on their journey, and how we respond to these scenarios has the potential to determine the trajectory of our lives.

In the words of Arianna Huffington, "Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down."