I Wonder… (Year 1, Week 28)

I wonder how old the world really is?

I wonder how many gallons of water are in the ocean?

I wonder how the world would react if we time travelled?

I wonder how people eat eggplant?

After reading the beautiful story book “I Wonder” by Annaka Harris during Tuesday’s morning launch, the heroes were invited to explore their own wonderings about the world. The above responses were some of their questions.

The heroes then spent time exploring their questions and researching potential answers to each others questions. While lots of interesting information was discovered, the heroes also discussed how sometimes it keeps you more curious when you keep wondering about something and never know the definitive answer.

A New Hero

We are so pleased to welcome a new hero in to the studio this week! Franki started with us this Wednesday and is beginning to learn more about the studio systems and processes. Thank you to all the heroes that have helped welcome Franki and introduce her to how the Heroes Academy community works!

Quest

The E’ship heroes are beginning to feel urgency as their children’s business fair is coming up quickly!

This week the heroes explored how to deal with competition and substitutes for their products and also began preparing products and decorations for their booths. The Nesting heroes have also been helping their E’ship quest partners and Friday was a particularly productive day as all the heroes prepared decorations, signs, price lists and their products.

The E’ship heroes were also able to experience how a company operates and manufactures its products during their excursion on Monday. The heroes visited Camille Beckman, a skincare company in Eagle, giving them an interesting real-world insight in to a business. They came away with many lessons learned, in particular how similar it was to the simple assembly lines they created just a few days earlier, only with bigger machines and different products.

Writer’s Workshop

While knowing how to give and receive feedback well is something many don’t learn until adulthood, it is a consistent part of being in the studio. This week the heroes have been practising this further as they gave each other peer critiques about their poem drafts. This was done in the form of a “Feedback Sandwich”

Next week, the heroes will decide on the poem they wish to edit and publish as their final piece.

An additional writing goal was also set where the heroes will be working toward earning a party by reaching goals in both handwriting and typing. When all the heroes accomplish the individual challenges, the studio will have a party!

Kindness and the Contract

Towards the end of the week the heroes struggled with upholding their contract promises to treat others with respect and speak with kindness, encouragement and truth. On Thursday afternoon our closing group addressed the atmosphere that had developed in the studio throughout the day. The heroes discussed how they feel when someone calls them a name or speaks to them in a hurtful way. They then listed words to describe how they feel when someone says something encouraging or complementary to them. Obviously there was a big difference between these two lists!

The heroes had to choose if they wanted to uphold the contract promises they created at the start of the year or lower their standards and change the contract. As each hero entered the studio on Friday morning they placed them name on a board under the option they chose: uphold or change. All heroes decided that they wanted to keep the contract as it is and work harder at upholding their promises to treat each other as they want to be treated, be respectful and speak only with kindness, encouragement and truth.

As is the case with the hero’s journey also, the studio was full of highs and lows, challenges and victories this week. While we witnessed the challenges of distraction, conflict with others, and even alarm when losing Hammie (again!…she’s yet to be found!), we also had the privilege of witnessing the wonder and joy of curiosity, the reward of overcoming distraction and the power of a kind community.