What Motivates a Hero? (Year 1, Week 29)

Our question of the year was revisited this week during a launch about motivation and teamwork. The heroes were challenged with three team tasks to complete: one of which required them to be broken up into two competing teams, and the others in which they were working together as one large team.

After enjoying taking on each challenge the heroes discussion turned to questions of motivation. Which is more motivating: working against another team and trying to beat them or working together as one large team to accomplish a common goal?

Each of the heroes that shared during this discussion all agreed that working as one large team was more motivating, their evidence being that they often feel bad if their competing team loses (and also because working all together is more fun!) We have seen the culture and sense of togetherness of the tribe continue to strengthen over the past few sessions, and it is fun to see how the heroes themselves prefer working as one also.

The business fair approaches!

As the Children’s Business Fair is rapidly approaching, the heroes have been working on practising selling to customers, creating decorations and signage for their booth and preparing their products.

On Monday the heroes finalised their pitches and how they will interact with their customers. They practised these with the nesting heroes, who pretended to be their customers and gave them warm and cool feedback.

The heroes also created lists of what they needed to complete in order for their booths to be fully prepared. Friday afternoon was their last opportunity to finish preparations, including an excursion to the shops to purchase any last minute items they may need for their booths.

Writing

Writing has continued to be a focus this session and the heroes have set a group goal to focus on writing. Once each hero has written 3 Writeabout posts (an online writing community) and three handwritten journal entries, the entire group will enjoy a party to celebrate!

This session’s Writer’s Workshop has been focusing on poetry and on tuesday they chose one poem to publish. Their final challenge for this workshop is to create an artwork that incorporates their chosen poem.

Art experience

Art experiences have been an increased part of the studio this session. This week we spent Thursday afternoon outside in the sunshine as the heroes created artworks using natural objects.

Once outside the heroes spent time finding natural objects. They all met back together to then create either a real animal or an imaginary creature. An extra challenge was for them to then use objects that someone else had found to create a creature that expressed a certain emotion.

Take a look at some of their creative work!:

Mini Maintenance

Over the last few days the heroes have been having a hard time upholding their contract promise to treat the studio like a sacred place. The studio was often left messy with studio maintenance jobs incomplete at the end of the day. After bringing this up in a group discussion at the end of one day the heroes brainstormed ideas that may help. They voted on two ideas and decided to try doing a mini maintenance after free time each day for five minutes to make end-of-day studio maintenance more effective.

So far, this seems to be making a difference for the heroes and, as they reflected on this experiment, they voted to continue mini maintenance next session.

This also exemplifies so much that happens in the studio. The choice to overcome initial resistance to hard work, the ability to stratagize and brainstorm solutions to a problem and reflecting on the process.

The Children’s Business Fair!

Thank you to all who were able to attend the fair this Saturday and congratulations to all the heroes who sold their products. The heroes have worked hard this session to prepare for this day and it was wonderful to see their excitement and anticipation as they looked forward to putting their entrepreneurial knowledge into action with this real world experience.

And congratulations to Prehistoric Color, Smoothie Society (Julianna and Franki) and Jack’s Photos (Jack) for their awards for Most Original, Best Presentation and Highest Business Potential!

As we watched the heroes thrive throughout this quest and at the exhibition, it was a happy reminder of the joy, hard work and meaning that each of them will experience on their hero’s journey. We are honored to be part of that journey alongside them.