Patience, Patience, Patience (Year 1, Week 21)

Is everyone born with a certain amount of patience or can everyone can increase their patience?

This was the question that started a launch this week about the session character trait of patience. While many of the heroes believed that everyone can increase their patience, a few of them also made their case that people are only capable of a certain amount of patience. The heroes provided evidence and examples for each of their opinions and also shared ideas of how to increase patience.

As the heroes become more comfortable in the studio, it is exciting to hear how the heroes are also becoming more confident in sharing their insights and input during discussions.

Last week Betsy also brought a Town Hall meeting request to the group. As a special test of patience, she wanted to conduct a marshmallow challenge with the group. On Monday during close she led the studio in the challenge…stare at a marshmallow for 5 minutes silently. Those who could resist eating the marshmallow, received two after the 5 minutes were up. Well done to all the heroes…they were all able to resist eating the marshmallow!

Writer’s workshop

This week the first Writer’s Workshop for this session was introduced. The heroes are exploring the questions:

• where am I from?
• where am I now?
• where am I going?

The real world experience will be to create a biographical profileto be used in a “founding heroes” book for our studio library.

How to help foster a love of writing is an ongoing question for guides in the studio. While the heroes have seemed more engaged during the DEAJ (drop everything and journal) times that have been introduced this session, developing excitement and engagement in the writer’s workshops has proven a challenge. While there are a handful of heroes that enjoy writing, many experiments are being made to give heroes more opportunity, inspiration and motivation to write in the studio.

SOLE

What defines home?

No matter what country, how old you are or what language you speak everyone can relate to the idea of home. But what it is that really makes a place home? Is it the house, the neighborhood, the people or something else?

The heroes explored this question during their SOLE time this week on Tuesday morning.

Rather than working in groups as they usually do, the heroes explored this individually and then presented their definition to the group. The heroes recorded their responses on a piece of paper that are now displayed on the studio wall.

I was interesting to hear the differing definitions of home. This variety prompted the question… Is there a difference between a house and a home? Many of the heroes agreed that “being at home” was more about the building you live in more than anything else. While a few heroes disagreed with this, stating that a house can’t be home without the people you live with, they all agreed that home was a place where you feel safe and comfortable.

Quest

This week the quest has been focused on creating simple machines using pulleys and levers. As the heroes continue to explore physics concepts, the challenges this week saw them make a compound machine that uses a pulley and a lever to launch a stack of 10 pennies as far as possible as well as a complex marble run.

The heroes particularly enjoyed the marble run challenge, inspired by watching videos of complex inventions such as Rube Goldberg machines.

As the heroes are working in partners for this quest, many are facing the challenges that come with working with someone else, particularly patience. The learning that is occurring about physics is second to the rich life lessons the heroes are having to learn when facing and resolve conflict and working to come to compromise in their pairs.

Ultimately the studio is filled with heroes on a hero’s journey, taking responsibility, loving learning, and working through struggle, with lots of celebrations in between. Thank you parents for allowing us to walk alongside these young heroes.