posts in heroes

2023 Children's Business Fair

Sunday, September 10, 2023 Starland Yard

 


It's time for a business fair! 

Just in time for holiday shopping... Our first annual Children's Business Fair. There is no reason for science to have all the fair fun. We're hosting a fair for young entrepreneurs to show their small business savvy. 

Apply here.
Spread the word via the FB Event Page here.

In learner-driven spirit, we ask that all businesses be the child's business. 

  • Parents of younger children may sit in their booth, but the children are to be responsible for setup, sales and interacting with the customers.
  • This event is designed to give children a taste of selling a product. Please let them have that experience.
  • Any parent seen selling to the customer or promoting the child’s product will result in disqualification from the competition.

Details

WHAT: Kids develop a brand, create a product or service, build a marketing strategy, and then open for customers at our one-day marketplace. 

WHO: Young Entrepreneurs age 6 -15 with a business (or just a great idea!). Be sure your child is ready and able to come up with their own idea, create the branding, as well as run and manage their business. (No parental assistance in the booth.) This fair is for child-created & child-run businesses. 

WHO ELSE: Shoppers to come out and shop the market - let’s show these kids that hard work pays off! 

WHERE: Starland Yard - Desoto Ave

WHEN: Saturday, December 16th, 2023 from 12 pm – 4 pm. 
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2023 Children's Business Fair

Measuring Success

Friday, January 13, 2023 Savannah, GA, USA

How do you measure success for yourself? For your child? What do you value? What will give you the feeling of a life well lived when looking back on your life at 90?

When looking back on life, we think there are three big questions to measure success: 

  • Did I contribute something meaningful? 
  • Was I a good person? and
  • Who did I love, and who loved me?

Are your daily habits in line with how you measure success? 


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Measuring Success

When We Say Goodbye

Monday, May 3, 2021 Savannah, GA, USA


People move. Rarely does anyone live in one city for their whole life. And even if you stay in one place for a lifetime, there will still be coming and going around you. It creates an indisputable fact: you'll meet a changing cast of fellow travelers on your journey. 

At our studio, when one of our learner's Hero's Journey takes them somewhere new, it's different from a classmate who moves away at a traditional school. Here, we don't only say goodbye to a friend we enjoy playing with, we also say goodbye to one of our guides who has been teaching and helping us on our own journey, to a studio mate who has helped us build our culture, to a leader that has helped us create our governing rules and who helps hold us accountable to the standards we strive to live up to daily. 

In a self-governing studio, it's hard to express just how vital each hero is. After all, they run the place. When we say goodbye to one of our young heroes, we say goodbye to much more than a friend. 

All we can do is hold the present moment lightly, knowing the only constant we can count on is change. Enjoy the parade of personalities. Soak up as many lessons as we are fortunate enough to be exposed to. Be grateful for every twist and turn, as around every corner is an opportunity. And most of all, keep taking the steps to further our Hero's Journey. 

<3 

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When We Say Goodbye

Beware! Monsters!

Monday, April 26, 2021 Savannah, GA


Congratulations! You've accepted the call to adventure. The start of a Hero's Journey! You are ready to welcome responsibility for your choices and learn the lessons your choices bring, both comfortable and uncomfortable.


Some major players on your path will be three monsters: resistance, distraction and victimhood. 


These are tricky monsters. They will try to trip you up. Here are some ways they may rear their ugly little heads when you are trying to accomplish a difficult but essential goal. 


Resistance: There are (seemingly) a million other things you can reasonably work on and still consider yourself somewhat productive, all easier and less demanding of you than taking on that challenging task — things where failure and discomfort are improbable. So why not just switch to one of those?


Distraction: Squirell!!!! Everything you see/hear distracts you from what you are trying to accomplish.


Victimhood: Self-talk such as, "I'm just not good at it and never will be. I'll never be good at it." "I put in the right answer, but the program is telling me I'm wrong. It's not my fault I'm not progressing. The program is cheating me." "It's not my fault. I am not responsible for my situation. My choices do not affect my situation. I'm powerless. So there's nothing I can do to make it better."


Initially, identifying these three when they pop up is not fun. Seeing and admitting you are the one stopping yourself is hard. It's humbling. But once you know the monster in your way, you can work on strategies to defeat him. And that is what heroes do.

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Beware! Monsters!

Empowering Warm Hearts

Monday, April 12, 2021 Savannah, GA

 


A self-governing studio sounds very foreign to those of us who spent K-12 being told how things were going to work. We assume young people won't be able to make tough calls, identify problems and fix them. But they are actually very, very good at this. Better than most adults, actually. They have a natural sense of justice and what is fair. 

Why wouldn't you want to nurture this natural skill from the get-go instead of suppressing it? 

Here's a story from this year: Learner One is very slow getting his shoes on and out the door for free time. Learners Two and Three are much faster; they put their shoes on and run out for free time. Learner One cries out; no one waits for him! Two and Three don't do anything about it. They tell him to be faster with his shoes. (Tough love from those guys.) A new Learner shows up, Learner Four. 

Learner Four has a lot of kindness and patience. He is very warmhearted. When free time starts, Learner One laments that no one waits for him and expresses that it makes him sad. Learner Four has a big heart and says, I'll wait for you, and he does.

But after a couple of days, he also starts to feel left out from the other two, who have already started enjoying their free time. At this point in traditional school, self-sacrifice would be his only option if he wanted to keep Learner One from feeling sad, mad and upset with the other two learners. A.k.a., being the one to try and keep everyone happy by foregoing your own needs.

In our studio, though, he calls a town meeting. He is six years old. He proposes a new rule to try: We wait and all go outside together as a group. It gets a majority vote. So, everyone is now going out as a group as we test this new rule. 

But Learner Four starts to notice that Learner One isn't even out in the hallway tying his shoes. Learner One is doing other things, playing with toys, drawing... with the knowledge and power that everyone HAS to wait on him. Learner Three, who has little patience, points out this is precisely why he doesn't ever want to wait on Learner One to get his shoes on. Learner One is taking his sweet time and in a way, taking advantage of the warm heart of Learner Four.

Learner Four proposes to amend his rule to be that we wait for everyone who is actively working on getting their shoes tied to go outside. If you are doing other things and not tying your shoes, no one has to wait for you. Now we have the right combination of warmhearted/toughminded to be kind toward Learner One, but not to be self-sacrificing or being taken advantage of.

This big-hearted child had the tools to change and improve everyone's environment instead of having to choose between watching someone go into emotional distress or self-sacrifice. How horrible to be stuck between only those two options?

There's nothing I could have done better as an adult to have handled the situation from a problem-solving standpoint. And even better, the learner was the one to be empowered. He is one step closer to seeing the studio as his studio.

Warmhearted learners are not pushed around or taken advantage of in a self-directed studio. They rise up and become our virtuous leaders. 

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Empowering Warm Hearts

Task Commitment

Tuesday, July 28, 2020 Savannah, GA


Framing learning and life as part of a heroic journey is one of the ways we develop and strengthen task commitment at Acton Savannah. The ability to stick with a task once it becomes hard is challenging, but creativity and ability are not enough. If you want to reach your goals, you must master task commitment.

A focus on task commitment is one of the things that makes Aspire Savannah a challenging educational environment. In this environment, learners can grow confident through their hard-earned accomplishments. They gain a solid sense of self-esteem based on achievements and measurable growth. 



Learn more about Joseph S. Renzulli's work.
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Task Commitment

Harnessing the Heroic

Friday, May 15, 2020 Savannah, GA

Photo by TK Hammonds on Unsplash

"For the more pragmatic among us, calling a child a hero can feel a little disingenuous, or indulgent even. As if we’re using the term as a special compliment or accolade, in order to boost their self-esteem or sensitive ego. But keep in mind, we’re not calling young people kings and queens, we’re calling them heroes. And we’re not doing so to feed their young egos — in fact, quite the opposite."

This is an excerpt from a Medium essay by Lauren Quinn, one of the founders of The Village School. She talks about the Acton learning design and how the Hero's Journey narrative is the "secret sauce" to the learning experience.

You can read the whole article here.
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Harnessing the Heroic

The Hero's Journey

Thursday, May 14, 2020 Savannah, GA


If you accept life's call to adventure, you begin a Hero's Journey.

This journey is not about the destination. It's about what you learn along the way and how it builds your character. The story of the Hero's Journey focuses on effort and handling difficulty instead of emphasizing winning or achieving a specific rank. Merely accepting the call to adventure and taking on a challenge is a big step in and of itself. So big, in fact, that many people never answer that call.

Taking on the challenge isn't a guarantee you'll always end up in the number one position, but it guarantees you will grow. If you get up each time you fall, help others along the way, try your best and learn the lessons of the journey, then you are a hero.

Using stories of the Hero's Journey and being a hero is one of the ways we foster a growth mindset in our learners. Being heroes builds the deep self-confidence that comes from choosing what is challenging, not what is easy, and knowing you have the fortitude to accomplish hard things.
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The Hero's Journey
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