A Season of Joy and Gratitude (Year 1, Week 13)

This week ends a short, but eventful session. While only three weeks, there have been a large range of activities, experiences, and challenges. As the heroes anticipate the coming celebrations, this week they enjoyed lots of christmas-themed activities, as well as opportunities to serve others and share gratitude.

The week began with wondering, which is most important: encouragement, kindness or truth? Many heroes began by asserting that kindness is the most important of the three, however Xaria was able to convince some of her fellow travellers to change their opinions after sharing convincing comments on why truth was the most important. This discussion helped the heroes think about how they can uphold their studio contract promise: speak only with encouragement, kindness and truth.

Christmas Cookies

During Monday afternoon the heroes enjoyed a fun activity to finish the day with: decorating Christmas cookies. Armed with festive icing, sprinkles and decorations the heroes had lots of fun decorating cookies for themselves as well as to gift to friends and family.

A Christmas Challenge

Tuesday morning kicked-off with a Christmas-themed challenge: find out about how another country or culture celebrates christmas. The heroes worked in pairs to discover how other countries celebrate including what they eat, when and if they give gifts, and who delivers the gifts. The heroes reported back their findings to the group about Christmas in Antartica, China and even Australia!

Service Project

Last week the heroes decided that they wanted to practice gratitude by doing something to help and serve the community. The heroes voted on making gifts and cards for the people in the offices around the school and also for the organization Meals on Wheels, to be delivered to their customers with their meals. On Tuesday afternoon the heroes were excited to start creating a range of gifts using some fun Christmas craft supplies.

On Wednesday morning the heroes and guides drove to the Meals on Wheels office to deliver the gifts they had created. The heroes had the opportunity to share with the director and other staff members why and what they had created for the Meals on Wheels customers. The staff thanked the heroes and shared a little of their own hero’s journey also. Overall, the experience brought a real-world opportunity to practice the character traits such as gratitude, helping and generosity that we have been discussing this session.

Exhibition Preparation

As the week continued, intentionality in the studio began to drop, making preparing for the exhibition a mixture of short bursts in focus amongst distractions. However, as often happens, the heroes surprised us with the what they were able to achieve in a short time. On Thursday the heroes were given an hour to begin preparations for the exhibition in groups…tasks they completed very quickly and efficiently. On Friday morning each hero prepared individually for their exhibition role and had an opportunity to practice as a group. The heroes are becoming increasingly comfortable with giving and receiving warm and cool feedback in order to refine and improve their work.

Movie Party

This session the heroes earned a movie party and celebrated this Thursday by watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” with party food. The heroes have been working on holding high studio standards by holding each other accountable to their contract promises. When a courageous hero holds another accountable to their contract promises, a hero buck is added to group jar to earn a party. They set a goal of 30 hero bucks asked for in order to earn their party…last week their goal was reached and they enjoyed their Christmas party this week.

Xaria also surprised her fellow travellers at lunch time with a special treat. She had brought cookies to distribute and share with the whole studio. It is exciting to see the community of heroes continue to bond and demonstrate such kindness and generosity towards each other.

Exhibition

This session’s exhibition included an overview of the many things that have been packed into this short session.

The quest from this session, Pitch-a-Pet, culminated in the pitch presentations given at the exhibition. Caden, Jack, Julianna, Kai and Betsy all presented their pitches of a pet they want in the studio. After the heroes and parents had all voted on the pitches, the winner was announced at the end of the exhibition…congratulations to the winning pitch by Caden and Jack!

The exhibition wrapped up with a group Socratic discussion, including the parents and guests. The discussion focused around if the heroes are capable of taking responsibility for a studio pet without parents or guides intervening. While most of the guests had reservations, and some of the heroes themselves admitted there was a chance they may not properly care for a pet, most heroes were determined that they would be able to take full responsibility for the pet…a discussion that will continue next session before the pet is purchased.

We hope heroes and their families enjoy a safe and happy Christmas and New Year, and come back prepared for an exciting year ahead. See you in 2018!