Accountability Reminders

(Year 4, Week 17)

Monday morning the heroes walked in and found that the studio was closed. For most, it wasn’t a surprise. They came running in with questions such as:

“Is school closed today?”

“Do we have to learn outside in the cold?”

“Are we never going to be able to go back in?”

After thirty minutes of chatter, the heroes sat down for morning launch, in the front entrance. Slowly the guide brought out items that were left throughout the studio, a few of the items included:

1. Pizza left on the floor.
2. Cups spilling over with water and juice.
3. Moldy sandwiches.
4. gum that was smashed into the carpet.
5. plastic bags.

Everything else was left in its place. The heroes were asked the following question:

“Should we take treating the studio like a sacred place off of the contract?”

Hands shot up. Everyone of the heroes said no and their reasonings why, varied.

“If we take that off we will be hoarders.”

“We need to leave it on because it keeps it clean in here.”

“It’s just flat out disrespectful.”

“My parents don’t send me here to trash the place. I need to treat it with respect.”

“I want to learn better habits.”

The heroes were clearly in agreement. The studio being left in the status is was on Friday, was not acceptable. They then were challenged with setting up a plan. Over the next 35 minutes, the heroes sat in a private discussion where they decided who would do what job, who needs to be in charge of upholding the jobs and they chatted about their failures in upholding the contract. After that, the heroes worked for another 30 minutes to deep clean the studio. Every single hero took on the challenge, there wasn’t one who wandered off or refused to help. They saw it as a community issue, not just an individual issue. While they didn’t get into core skills until almost 9:45, they believed it was worth it because,

“If we don’t respect our space, how can we focus on learning?”

Displays

The heroes quest was called Cartography. While they did spend every day looking at maps, tracking their journeys and learning about longitude and latitude. There was an element within the quest that appeared to be more exciting than just maps, and that element was culture. At the beginning of the session, the heroes chose small groups and picked a country to study. The point was to develop detailed maps and study the coordinates of the country. However, in true hero fashion, they made up their own rules. They finished the necessary challenges but decided culture needed to be a big part of the quest. They put their heads down and got to work on studying what makes each country, a country!

During the week, shouts of joy were heard during quest:

“Did you know Ireland has it’s own language!?”

“You will not believe what people eat in Thailand.”

“I think it’s so cool how other countries know more than one language.”

“Did you know that Vietnam has the biggest cave in the world?”

The heroes were passionate about the facts they learned about their country. Using those to do comparisons to the United States was one of the best parts of the week. They circled up and shared with one another the different facts they found and how they thought it was so interesting compared to where they live. From the food to the music, they discovered endless tidbits of information. It inspired three of the heroes to take on a huge challenge. They are designing their own food quest. They thought what the middles schoolers did during the year was amazing, and since they got to study countries too, they thought they could develop and create a quest that would match the Discovery studios vibe (as they call it). By Friday they had already designed two weeks worth, filled with launches and challenges. The love of learning you see in the Discovery studio a great reminder of just how incredible young people are.

Reading Buddies

Flying and Soaring heroes were offered a unique opportunity to go into the Spark studio and work with the younger heroes on reading. Since school started, the Discovery heroes have been dying to go into the studio and help wherever they would be helpful. Moving forward, once a week, the Discovery heroes will be invited in for a fifteen minute reading session. They will get to select a Spark hero or two and pair up with them to do buddy reading.

The way for a Discovery hero to be invited into the Spark studio is if they are in Flying or Soaring and haven’t received any strikes during the session. This helps keep them accountable for their learning and puts guardrails in place that work for both studios.

The Discovery and Spark studio are looking forward to more opportunities to work together and to be invited into one another’s studios. For now, the focus is on reading and developing a strong connection to fellow heroes in different studios.

New Challenges

Speaking of connecting between studios. Seven heroes in the Discovery studio were asked to be part of the Civilization discussions in the Adventure studio. They had to go through a series of tasks to be able to be admitted into the discussion. At the beginning they were excited and ready to step up. They got to work on studying the specifics and then started typing out their required assignment.

The first day rolled around for them to be admitted into the discussion and much to their surprise, most of them were turned away. That was a difficult day for them. They had spent multiple hours working towards their goal only to be turned away. However, the feedback they received from the Adventure studio was impactful. They got tips on their grammar and were told what they needed to do to be admitted next time. When the second opportunity during the week rolled around, four heroes out of the seven took on the challenge. While the other three decided they just were not ready to take it on, yet.

To their surprise, the four heroes were accepted into the discussion! They were excited and chatting about what they learned and what they thought they could improve on. When asked what they were most excited about, their response was,

“finally being able to get to work in the Adventure studio.”

Global Detectives

The heroes got to take on the role of being a global detective on Friday. They were challenged with playing the Google Earth Game, Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego. They spent the afternoon searching the world, reading maps and finding the Crown Jewels.

They were so excited to team up and become detectives on a big journey. They worked with one another to overcome challenges and debated on wether or not they could take on the challenge of being an international spy.

They learned that spies need to know an array of things. Stuff they thought was outdated. Such as, learning to read maps in multiple languages, knowing how to use a compass and being able to read coordinates. When asked what they thought would be the most challenging a few of them said;

“Reading a compass, what on earth would you do if you were stuck in Antartica!?”

“If you got taken and had to get home, but didn’t even have a map, you’d have to know the language to figure it out!”

“I think reading maps would be tricky, what if the map wasn’t up to date and you got lost?”

After they were finished they tried their hand at the game called Trekking. This is a board game where heroes can design their own travel bucket list. They get to visit places like the Great Barrier Reef, Mount Fuji and the Great Wall, just to name a few. The heroes learned all sorts of facts about the neighboring continents and even learned that a few continents were ten times bigger than they thought, with one hero saying,

“Man, we really need a cartographer in this world who draws to scale! Maybe I could.”

Wrap-Up

The heroes started the week off with a big challenge. The challenge of cleaning up the studio. When they left on Friday pizza and juice could be found throughout the studio, under tables and in corners of the rooms. The heroes took it upon themselves to set up better guardrails and improve their studio maintenance system. During quest time, the heroes were passionate about their countries and not the map sections. They were passionate about studying the culture. They fell in love with art, language and all things food. Some even planned imaginary trips to their countries! The heroes got a chance to move into the Spark studio and Adventure studio. Being reading buddies and taking on the the challenge of doing a Civilization write-up. It was a week of connecting with younger and older heroes and a week faced with new challenges. The heroes ended the week being global detectives and traveling the world via an online game and a board game with a detailed map. They put in quite the work, faced challenges and ended it smiling with a donut in hand!