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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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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"I taught myself"

Tuesday, September 29, 2020 Savannah, GA

 


"Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn." — Benjamin Franklin

The mom of a five-year-old learner told me the learner was adding hundreds in the car. He said adding 500 + 500 wasn't any more complicated than adding 5 + 5. She asked where he learned this, and he said he taught himself. 

Montessori materials provide a hands-on way for learners to experience our base-ten number system and in effect, teach themselves through their own physical actions and critical thinking. The self-directed discovery that opens the door to critical thinking at a young age leads to a strong math foundation. One that will not collapse later on in elementary and beyond when concepts and critical thinking become necessary.

This kind of learning is in contrast to being instructed to memorize steps to produce rote calculations. The memorization of steps as instructed provides a shortcut to better-standardized test scores but is a fragile foundation to build on.

As always, in-depth discovery trumps spoon-fed memorization in the long run. Not to mention the self-confidence learners gain from knowing they can figure things out independently. This leads to gains in more than just math. 

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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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